How to Talk About Being Tired in English! 🛌🏻😴💤

So, as many of you know, the ideas for these English

lessons come from my own life, and today I'm tired.

So today you get an English lesson about being tired.

So let's start by talking about

the reason why I'm tired.

And as I give you my three reasons,

they're also common phrases that all English speakers

use when talking about being tired.

I was up late Friday night, I stayed up late

Friday night, I went to bed late Friday night.

Those are very common ways to

describe why you are tired.

My school went to a baseball game.

We went to see the Toronto Blue Jays, and

I didn't get home until quarter to two.

And I went to bed at 02:00 a.m.

so three common phrases you can

use to describe why you're tired.

You can say, I was up late, you can say, I stayed

up late, or you can say, I went to bed late.

So of course, it's not just going to

bed late that can make you tired.

Sometimes you have to get up early in the morning.

This past Saturday I was up early.

This past Saturday I had to get up early.

This past Saturday I got up early, I went

to bed late and I got up early.

It's a bad mix, so I think that's why I'm extra tired.

My son needed to be somewhere, so I got up early.

I had to get up early.

I was up early on Saturday in order to

bring him to where he needed to go.

Sometimes you're tired because you go to bed too late.

Sometimes you're tired because you have to get up early.

And sometimes it's actually both.

Now, of course, in English we like to emphasize

sometimes, and in the sentences I just taught you,

I would use the words way too.

In order to emphasize.

I would say that Friday I was up way too late.

Friday I stayed up way too late.

Friday I went to bed way too late.

Saturday morning I got up way too early.

Saturday morning I was up way too early.

And Saturday morning I had to get up way too early.

So you just add those two little words and

it really emphasizes what you're trying to communicate.

So you might think, I'm wearing sunglasses

because I have bags under my eyes. I don't actually.

At least not too bad.

It's Monday today and I was up late Friday

night and I got up early Saturday, so you

think I would have recovered by now.

But no, I'm not wearing sunglasses to hide

the bags under my eyes, which is a

common thing to have when you're tired.

I'm just wearing them because it's really sunny.

So if someone was to ask me why I

seem so tired, I would probably answer kind of

abruptly, not even using a complete sentence.

If someone said, Bob, you seem

really tired today, what's up?

I might just say, ugh, lack of sleep.

And then that would communicate to the person that

I'm tired because I didn't get enough sleep.

I might also just say, oh, not enough sleep.

Basically the same thing indicating to them that

I'm tired because I didn't get enough sleep

or because of a lack of sleep.

So how do you actually say

that you're tired in English?

Well, you use the word tired.

If someone said to me, Bob, how are you feeling today?

I would say, oh, I'm tired because I

stayed up way too late on Friday night.

You might also say, I'm exhausted.

Like, if you're really tired and you want to emphasize

how tired you are, you might say, I'm exhausted.

I need a nap.

If you actually feel like you might fall asleep, like

maybe you're sitting in a meeting and they turn the

lights off, or you're in a classroom and they turn

the lights off to show a movie or something on

the projector, you might say, I'm drowsy or I'm sleepy.

That literally means that you might fall asleep.

Like, your eyes might just kind of

go shut and you might fall asleep.

And then the phrase we use to describe that

is, I can hardly keep my eyes open, or

I'm barely able to keep my eyes open.

Sometimes you're just so tired, your body kind of takes

over and says, hey, we're going to sleep right now.

It's usually bad when that happens, but

sometimes when you're really tired, you can

hardly keep your eyes open.

So there's a couple older words that mean

that you're tired that we don't really use

anymore, and they're the words fatigued and weary.

Now, I should say, I don't really use them anymore.

You might actually hear them if you watch an

old movie or if you're reading an older book.

Someone might say, oh, I'm very

fatigued, or, I'm very weary.

But to me, they sound like older

words that aren't very common anymore.

I think English learners like to use the

word fatigued because it is common in other

languages, or it's, you know, it's equivalent.

It might even look the same in your language.

But two words that we don't really

use very much anymore, fatigued and weary.

So sometimes you're tired because of a

lack of sleep, but sometimes you're tired

because you just did something physical.

Maybe you worked out at the gym or you

went for a long hike and you're feeling tired.

In those situations we use slightly different phrases.

You might say I'm pooped, which

is kind of a funny phrase.

I'm not going to tell you what poop means, but

when you say I'm pooped, it means you're really tired,

usually physically tired.

You might say, oh, I'm beat.

The other day I had to dig in the ground for Jen.

I had to dig a trench.

And when I was done that, I was like, whew, I'm beat.

Basically saying I'm physically very tired.

And then you might say, I'm worn out.

After a long day, you might be both physically and

mentally tired and you would say, oh, I'm worn out.

If you went on a really long hike, at the end

of the hike, you might say, oh, I'm worn out.

That was very, very difficult and now I'm tired.

I'm worn out.

Sometimes when we're tired from a lack of sleep, we'll

say that we need to catch up on on sleep.

We need to catch up on sleep.

Which I don't think is actually possible.

If you sleep for 6 hours one night, you

can't just sleep for 12 hours the next night

and then feel like everything is 100% again.

At least that doesn't work for me.

But what you can do is you can have a nap.

When you have a nap.

Or when you take a nap, it means you

sleep for ten minutes or 30 minutes in the

middle of the day instead of sleeping at night.

Maybe after lunch you sit on the couch or you

lie down on the couch and you take a nap.

Or you have a nap.

Just a short one, not too long.

If I sleep for more than an hour, like if I

have more than an hour nap, I usually don't feel good.

Ten minutes is just the right amount of

time for me to have a nap.

Well, hey, thank you so much for watching this

English lesson about how to talk about being tired

and how to explain why you're tired and little

things you can do if you're tired.

Like take a nap.

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Sometimes I actually have time to respond to them.

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And of course, if you have some extra time

and you want to learn some more English,

there's always more lessons to watch. Bye.