Transcript of AEE 2716: This is Us Breaking Down English Grammar

This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2716. This is us breaking down English grammar.

Welcome to the All Ears English podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection, with your American hosts, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS quiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.

In today's episode, you'll learn about a trendy new English phrase that you may have heard in a song. Find out what it illustrates and when to use it. Listen in today.

Hello, Lindsay. How are you today?

Good, Aubrey. How are you? How's everything?

You know, it's been a week. I actually had food poisoning over the weekend.

Ah.

But okay, this is me holding it together.

Well, you're—yeah, it seems like you're doing well for having had food poisoning over the weekend. Is that true, Aubrey? Did you really have food poisoning?

I've had a few days to recover. We just went to a taco place. We actually—it was really fun. We went to a movie, Miracle, which is like this movie about hockey, the U.S. Olympic hockey team in the '80s.

Oh, I heard that's a great one.

It's a great movie. You haven't seen it? It is great. I highly recommend it. Kurt Russell as the coach.

Yeah, yeah.

And I had seen it a long time ago, but the ASU hockey team showed it in their arena, like on the—there isn't ice there right now. It's just like the floor. But where they usually play, they played it on the big Jumbotron as like a fundraiser, I guess. And it was really fun. We took our kids, but then we went to dinner after, and I think I got food poisoning there.

What did you eat? Oh my gosh. That's not good.

It was a taco place. And I have a feeling, because the only thing I ate that—nobody else got sick but me. And they had one of those sort of like a salsa bar, and they had this pineapple salsa that was delicious, and I ate it, and nobody else had that. So that's, I think, we can pinpoint it to.

That's funny. Someone else was just saying this week that they had a pineapple salsa and they got sick, just this week.

Really?

Yeah.

I wonder if it's like pineapple sitting out is maybe more prone to foodborne illness, so maybe we avoid pineapple salsas.

Interesting. Maybe we do. So, but you're holding it together. Now, why—it's really curious the way you responded to my question. And within your story, you said you had gotten food poisoning, and this is me holding it together is what you said. So why didn't you just say, "I'm holding it together," right? Why?

Wow, such a great question. We got a really good question about this. This is sort of a trendy new construction that we are using and hearing more often. We're going to dive into it today so that you guys can use it today. Sort of puts the emphasis more on me instead of just like, "I'm holding it together," right? This is me holding it together. Like, here I am, right?

Yeah, it kind of paints a picture.

The action, the person, the drama a little bit. It paints a picture. We're going to pull in a little bit of music today, some musical lyrics from a well-known singer, and we're going to get into it today. But this question comes from Sophia on our YouTube channel, right?

Yes.

If I could read the question for us.

Okay. Yes.

She said, "Hi, I'm Sophia. Thank you so much for all your hard work. I love the podcast so much. It always makes my day, and I love that it's both entertaining and educational." Thank you, Sophia. We appreciate hearing that.

Really do. We do. All right, Aubrey.

Here's the question. She says, "I recently started watching Dark Winds. Highly recommend it. By the way, I have never heard of that, so I'm excited to check it out." I don't know if it's a TV show.

Yes.

So yeah. And she says, "I heard a character say, 'So this is you leaving. Why not? So you're leaving. Is there a difference in tone?' I'm also curious about this structure. This is someone verb-ing. I'd love an episode about it. Thanks again." I love this. This shows so she's being very observant about sort of new trendy phrases. I've noticed this as well, so I'm excited to dive into it.

Yeah, this is new and trendy for sure, so it will not be in your old English class, but we can cover it here on the show. Let's get into it a little bit, Aubrey. So essentially, "This is you leaving," it means the same thing as "you're leaving," of course. So the answer is yes, you could say the same thing. You could say "you're leaving." But why would we bother?

Yeah. It's like you said, Lindsay, it adds a little drama. It's a little more expressive and emphatic, and it's used for emotional situations, right? We would not just say, "This is me going to the grocery store." Like, what? No. When you say, "This is you leaving," there's some kind of emotional attachment. This is maybe someone leaving a relationship, or they're like maybe having a heartfelt conversation, and one person leaves, and you'd be like, "So this is you leaving," right? There is emotion involved here.

Yeah, for sure. Before we get any deeper into the episode, guys, I want to say a huge thank you to Satyesh Amjandiyan. Thank you so much for leaving us an amazing five-star review. Aubrey, the listener said, "I'm always a huge fan of All Ears English because I can improve my English skills very easily, and that's why I love it. Thank you for your great podcast." Amazing. Amazing.

Yeah, guys, thank you.

Thank you so much for these reviews, for everything, the YouTube comments, everywhere you leave reviews and ratings for the podcast. We read them. We really appreciate them.

Yes, 100%. Go ahead and leave your review if you have not done it yet, guys, wherever you listen, including the iOS or Android app. We also check those reviews weekly, so we want to know what you think of the show, and we'll do our best to announce your name out loud on the show. All right? So, Aubrey, it kind of makes sense, though, that this phrase does come up in a Taylor Swift song because her lyrics are pretty emotional, right? She doesn't just talk about going to the grocery store.

Yes, I was hearing, Lindsay, that as soon as I read Sophia's question, I thought of the Taylor Swift song, "This is Me Trying." And because, yeah, you're right, right? Her songs are emotional. They're often about heartache, breakups, right?

Big time, yeah.

So it makes sense. But I am hearing this more and more. It's extremely trendy. I am finding myself use this more and more. So there's actually two separate constructions we're going to get into. This first one that Sophia asked about, and then sort of a related one that has a slightly different grammar.

All right.

But let's dive into this first one.

All right. So the first one, the first option here is this is plus person plus verb plus -ing. So what does that look like? This is what we've been talking about, right?

The present continuous tense here, like we said, to add emphasis about something emotional, right? It kind of means like what you're seeing right now is me doing something, leaving, trying, something with emotion behind it.

Very emotional, a lot of angst, right?

This is you leaving, right? Again, this is you leaving. We've talked about this so far in the episode. And yeah, we've mentioned.

Like if you just have some people over for a party, and someone's about to leave, and it's normal, it's time for them to leave, you would never be like, "So this is you leaving." That would actually be so passive-aggressive, right? They would be assuming that you feel a lot of emotion about them leaving.

And on the other hand, the person leaving wouldn't say, "So this is me leaving," right? No, it's so ridiculous. And it makes me laugh.

Making a big to-do about it.

It's hilarious.

Everyone, this is me leaving.

No, no, no, no. Save it for the moments when maybe you're having a fight with your spouse, with your partner. This is really one that's going to come up, a friend, something deep that really, really matters. We're trying to really paint a picture of your emotions in the moment.

Yeah, because really what that means is, I don't think you should be leaving, right? If you say like, "So this is you leaving." You're passing judgment on the fact that they're leaving. They shouldn't be, but they are. So you're sort of calling that out.

Yeah, yeah. That's perfect for that situation and kind of only that situation in a way, right?

Yeah, that's interesting. And then this, the Taylor Swift song, "This is me trying," instead of just saying, "I'm trying," same sort of thing, right? It's like this effort may not look very impressive, but I'm trying to get you to recognize that I'm genuinely trying. I'm showing that there's emotion here. This is me giving it my all. This is me not giving up, right? So there's a reason we're constructing this. This would never be if you're at work and you're trying to fix your computer. You would never say to someone like, "This is me trying," because there's no emotion there.

No. It would be so funny if you did that. No, don't do that, guys. Don't do that. So what would be the second way that we can use this, Aubrey?

Yeah. So this is a little bit of a different construction where if you say, "This is," and the person, but then it's followed by an adjective or an adjective phrase, we're using it to describe a person. So for example, I might say, "This is me after only four hours of sleep," right? So we're still kind of putting the focus on the person. It's so fascinating to not have that verb-ing. The emotion is removed from it. Instead, I'm just describing myself in a fun way, right? Well, this is me after four hours of sleep. Take what you get.

Yes. Yeah, take what you get. Or for example, this is him calm. So imagine what he's like when he gets worked up, right? Yes.

Yes. Interesting. So of course, there are other ways to say this, right? I could say, "This is what I am like after four hours of sleep," or, "This is what he is like," so imagine. But this is also sort of a trendy construction where we just say, "This is," and then person, or, "This is," pronoun. Well, this is Mark after six cups of coffee, so good luck.

I love it. All right, really good stuff. So two options in terms of constructions, how you want to put this together, guys, but make sure you are saving it for very specific scenarios, all right? Good.

All right, Aubrey. So here we're coworkers in our role play. Are you ready?

Yeah, let's do it. We'll show how these both might be used.

Hey, you seem unusually energetic today. What's going on?

Well, this is me after three cups of coffee.

Oh, wow. Oh, you usually have one cup a day, right?

Yeah, exactly. I had two meetings over coffee with clients. I should have ordered decaf.

Oh, yeah. Impressive you got so much done this morning, though.

Thank you. This is me trying to be productive. I've already answered all my emails. So this is interesting. This is kind of different, actually.

The way we are, yeah. We are saying this at work, so we're nuancing the picture here, Aubrey, right?

Yeah, this is interesting. Like there is a little bit more emotion here. Like I'm sort of being judged, so I'm like, "Hey, this is me trying. Give me a break. I'm doing my best," right?

Yeah.

I could just say like, "I'm trying to be productive. I'm just adding a little bit more defensiveness when I say, 'This is me trying to be productive.'."

And in terms of kind of the context, you know it's really two coworkers, and maybe we're close, right? These two coworkers are pretty close, close enough to make comments on the other person's energy and how they normally are, right?

That's a good point.

You're not going into your boss and saying, "This is me trying to be productive," right? That wouldn't really work out of context, right, if you don't talk to that person very much.

No, good point. Really, from the first sentence, we know that, right? When you say, "You seem unusually energetic today," think of the coworkers you would say that to. You probably wouldn't go in and say it to your boss. You wouldn't say it to a client or a colleague you just met. Though this is the coworkers that you know pretty well. And the same, all of these phrases are more likely to be used among friends in daily conversations. But sometimes we have those conversations at work if we know our coworker well.

Yeah, but I like that we went into this because it's not just about angsty breakups and emotions, and we're sitting in our room crying. No, like it could just be talking about, "I had too much coffee," right? But there is a little bit of emotion there, right? Because you're trying to do something, right?

Yeah, and it's a little more subtle here. Like you made a good point there because it's not about a breakup. It's not about something hugely emotional. But there is a reason that instead of saying, "I'm trying to be productive," that I use this other chunk, this construction. This is me trying to be productive, still adds some emphasis, adds, you know, I am sharing a little more emotion here.

And it's a bit about saying, "This is what I this is how I try to," or you're kind of characterizing yourself in a way. You're portraying yourself in a way, right? You're kind of it's hard to put this into words, exactly what we're doing here, Aubrey, but I hope our listeners are aligned with what you just said.

I like what you just said there. We're kind of more making a judgment of our own character. Like when I'm trying, this is what it looks like. This is me trying, right?

Exactly. Poking fun at ourselves a little bit maybe, right?

Yeah, interesting.

Yeah. So should we go through each one again, just to finish up, summarize here, Aubrey?

Yeah. So the first one I use is just that second construction that we taught, actually, where you have, "This is," the person, and then an adjective phrase or an adjective, right? This is me calm. This is me after three cups of coffee. So this is more common. There doesn't have to be any emotion involved, right? And there's no verb-ing here, right? So this is actually really fun. You can use this all the time, right? This is me chill. And it's actually really fun. I do that a lot when someone's maybe surprised. They're like, "Huh?" And you'd be like, "You know what?

Oh, okay. Nice. I like that. And then we added the -ing verb. So I said, "Oh, yeah, impressive that you got so much done this morning, though." And you said, "Thank you. This is me trying to be productive," right? So maybe you're being productive, maybe you're not, but you're trying to be, right?

Yeah. And it's a good way to poke fun at yourself, right? Because maybe you're not. Maybe you're not being that productive, and you're just like, "You know what? This is me trying to be productive. Give me a break. I'm doing my best."

It's true. Yeah. It's not necessarily true that when you have more coffee, you're more productive. That's for sure. You might feel that way. At least in my experience, sometimes I'll have caffeinated coffee, like three cups, and I'll think I'm being all productive. Then I'll look at what I did, and I was just spinning my wheels, just going really fast through the browsers and not finishing anything.

Yes. Exactly. Stick with the decaf, right? Yeah. Seriously.

Guys, going over to episode 2710. Should you tell someone they're aging like a fine wine? That is the question of that day. Go and learn the answer, right?

Some great idioms there, right? This is me aging like a fine wine.

I love it.

That's definitely better to say about yourself. But yeah, check out that episode to find out some details.

Yeah. Guys, Aubrey, any final takeaway for connection? I mean, clearly there's connection here. We're going to deploy these phrases depending on how close we are to the person in front of us. We're going to kind of portray who we are in that moment. Anything else?

Yes. These are so fun. This is really trendy. If you haven't noticed this before, you probably are going to start hearing this. It's getting very common. So yeah, you can check out that Taylor Swift song, "This is me trying." You're going to hear this, right? This is him leaving. This is her, right? It's very common, and you should use it, right? These are fun. But especially with the verb-ing, like we said, save it for the times that are a little more emotional, something big emotional is happening.

Yeah. What is Taylor Swift going to do now that she's married? There's no more drama, right, to sing about. Where is the material going to come from? I always wonder that.

I'm really curious.

All right, great episode today, Aubrey. Thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you very soon.

All right.

Awesome. Thanks. See you next time.

All right.

Bye.

Bye.