Learn the English Phrases I'M AFRAID THAT... and I'M AFRAID NOT

In this English lesson

I wanted to help you learn the English phrase,

"I'm afraid that."

This is a phrase that we use

when we're telling someone bad news,

or when we're telling them something

that might disappoint them,

and it kind of shows

that we're being nice as we say it to them.

Here's a good example.

Let's say you had a trip planned

and then someone might call you and say,

"Hey, I'm afraid that I have to tell you

"that your trip has been canceled."

When you say "I'm afraid that,"

it kind of softens the blow a little bit.

It makes the bad news,

it's like you're saying it in a way

where you're trying to be as kind as possible

while you give them bad news.

So you might hear something like,

"I'm afraid that your team

"has traded the best player to another team."

That would be not very nice news, would it?

If you had a favorite player

and someone said, "Oh, did you hear,

"I'm afraid that they're trading him to another team."

The other phrase I wanna teach you today is very similar,

and it's the phrase "I'm afraid not."

This is similar to the first one,

but it simply means no,

and it's the same thing.

You're trying to say it in a nice way.

If you said to me, "Hey, did the Toronto Raptors

"win their basketball game last night?"

I would say, "I'm afraid not."

Basically no, they didn't win their game.

Philadelphia beat them hands down.

It was not a good game to watch.

It was kind of sad actually.

I feel really bad about it.

But if you were to ask me if they won,

I would probably say, you know, "I'm afraid not."

And you can see, I'm saying it in a way

where I know that you don't want to hear that bad news,

so I'm trying to soften it a little bit.

Hey, let's review though.

The first phrase, "I'm afraid that"

is used to give someone bad news.

"I'm afraid that your COVID test came back positive,"

or, "I'm afraid that your team

"has decided to trade all the players away

"and just have rookies next year."

That would be an interesting season.

And the phrase "I'm afraid not"

simply means no, but you're saying it in a way

where you're trying to be a little bit aware

that it is not nice news for the other person to hear.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

This comment is from Ruslan.

"Thanks for another great lesson, dear Teacher Bob.

"I noticed that you cover the plants with black film.

"What is this for? Very interesting."

And my response was, "It stops the weeds from growing."

So we should walk over there maybe.

It's a little windy today, but we'll take a walk anyways.

I have this microphone right now

which is supposed to work a little bit better in the wind.

You can see there's snow on the ground, by the way.

It was kind of a strange turn of events yesterday.

It went to minus five, it snowed in the night.

It definitely doesn't feel like spring,

which makes me laugh,

because the video I just put out a couple days ago

on my other channel is all about spring.

But let's take a look here, spin you around.

You'll see that these plants,

we cut circles into the black fabric,

and then we have peonies in here.

There's a few that are coming up

I think if we go this way.

Yeah, just a couple

popping out of the ground there.

So yes, we use this black fabric

to prevent weeds from growing.

If we don't have this fabric here,

the weeds just kind of grow really quickly.

It doesn't stop the weeds from growing

right in the middle of the plant,

but when the plant gets big enough,

it provides so much shade

that it stops the weeds from growing itself.

But we like to keep this as tidy as possible,

so we use the black fabric.

It's actually called landscape fabric.

That's the official name for it.

I hear one goose honking,

but I don't see it.

It's way over there.

Yesterday, I was kind of surprised

because I made a video

and I wanted the geese to be in it,

and there were like a couple hundred geese

out in the morning,

and then an hour later when I went to make the video,

they had all flown away.

Anyways, see you in a couple days

with another short English lesson, bye.