- In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn
the English phrase, forgive and forget.
When you forgive someone, it means that
they did something you didn't like,
they apologized and then you forgive them.
Basically, if they say, I'm sorry, you say something like,
hey, it's no big deal or hey, don't worry about it.
So when you forgive someone, it means that you no longer
are annoyed with them for doing something wrong.
When you forget something it means you simply
don't remember it anymore.
So we have this phrase in English that we say to people,
it's always best to forgive and forget
or it's good to forgive and forget.
That means if someone does something to you that's annoying,
it's probably best just to forgive them
and then just forget about it,
it's not easy to do.
Sometimes it's easy to forgive but it's not easy to forget,
sometimes it's easy to forget
and then you kind of don't forgive
because you're not thinking about it anymore
but usually if you can forgive and forget,
it's the best way to go.
The second phrase I wanted to talk about is
let bygones be bygones.
This is an older phrase but it's still used in English,
you'll hear it from time to time.
If you say to someone, let bygones be bygones,
it means that if something happened to them
that they didn't like, maybe it happened a long time ago,
they should just try not to think about it
and they should just forgive the person
who did that to them.
This is a tricky one because if it's something simple like
if you stole my lunch when I was in elementary school,
one or two times, I would probably if I met you today
and we're both the same age and we're old now,
I would probably say, hey let bygones be bygones.
I'm not even worried about the fact that you used
to steal my lunch in school.
So again, if you say forgive and forget,
it means that it's probably best if you can
to forgive somebody for wrong doing
and then try to forget about it
and then when you say, let bygones be bygones,
it means that you just want to let something
that happened in the past be forgotten
and to not worry about it anymore.
Hey, let's look at a comment that we got
and this comment actually has the phrase
let bygones be bygones in it.
This comment is from Jacques Vernier and Jacques says,
"Hi Bob, I'm French and I'm addicted to your lessons.
"Thanks to you, I learned that I'd been a class clown
"in my youth.
"I used to throw pieces of chalk at the board behind
"my teacher's back."
I shouldn't be laughing at this, should I?
"But let bygones be bygones,
"it was 60 years ago."
And my response to Jacques was,
well, you must have a great memory to remember so far back.
I agree though, let bygones be bygones
as it was so long ago.
So there is a great example of how to use the phrase,
let bygones be bygones.
But I do want to talk a little bit more
about forgiveness and forgetting.
Phrases like forgive and forget can seem so simple.
Like, oh, just forgive and forget.
And I know there are small things in life
that happened where it's really easy to forgive and forget
but I'm also aware that people
can be extremely mean to each other.
And I don't want to teach a phrase
like forgive and forget or let bygones be bygones
without recognizing the fact that sometimes things happen
to us in life, sometimes people do things to us
that's just wrong and it's very, very difficult to forgive
and it's extremely difficult to forget.
So again these phrases I think you can use
when you're talking about lighter moments in life
but certainly if something has happened to you in the past,
that was very traumatic,
that means something really bad happened to you,
maybe a crime or maybe something
that just wasn't very nice for you in life
to have someone say, just forgive and forget
or let bygones be bygones can make you feel kind of sad.
So I hope nothing like that has ever happened
to you in life and if it has, I hope that you can work
your way through it in a peaceful way
where you just feel right about
how you live your life now.