How to Talk About Mistakes in English

So I thought I would make

a little English lesson this week.

I'm starting to feel a lot better,

by the way, for those of you that don't know,

I was a little bit sick for a couple of

weeks, but I thought since I'm just feeling a little

bit better, I'll just make a little English lesson.

And this little English lesson will be about three

phrases you can use to talk about mistakes.

I made a mistake this morning.

That's the first phrase, by the way.

When you do something that you weren't

planning on doing, we usually describe it

with the phrase I made a mistake.

The mistake I made is I put the wrong attachment

on the clippers and I shaved my beard and mustache

shorter than I normally do, so I made a mistake.

That's the phrase I would use to describe that.

And there's a few other... by the way, it will grow back.

That's the nice thing about this kind of mistake,

is if I just wait a few days, it

will grow back and look normal again.

But does it look shorter?

Do you recognize me?

Maybe I look a little bit different.

Anyways, there's two other phrases you can

use to describe a situation like this.

The other one is you could

say I messed up. This morning

I messed up.

I don't know why.

I'm still trying to figure out how I made

this mistake or why I messed up this morning.

I went to the bathroom, I grabbed the clippers, there was

the little attachment laying beside the clippers, and I thought it

was the right one, so I clipped it on.

But yes, I definitely messed up.

And then the third phrase that you could use

to describe this kind of situation is very informal

and some people even consider it a little bit

crude, but I could say I screwed up.

I certainly screwed up this morning.

Again, it's not too big of a screw up, though, is it?

Because this will all grow back.

So just for a quick review, three ways that you

can talk about a mistake that you've made in English.

You can say simply I made a mistake,

or you can say I messed up.

Or you could say I screwed up.

Now, there is a fourth way to describe a mistake.

Here's a little bonus phrase for you.

If you're talking about something like math or

you're talking about maybe you're using a calculator,

you might say I made an error.

An error and a mistake are very similar.

Although when I think about it, I usually use

the word mistake as a general term, you know when you

do something that you didn't plan to do.

And I use the word error more for

things involving numbers and things like that.

I don't think it's a hard and fast rule by any means.

But for me personally, when I'm talking about numbers,

if I, for instance, was adding up the sales

for the week on the farm and I forgot

to add in a few sales, I might say,

Jen oh, I made an error.

Let me fix that.

So four phrases, I guess.

I made a mistake.

I messed up.

I screwed up and I made an error.

Hopefully you don't make too any errors.

Hopefully you're having a good week.

Sorry for the short lesson, but I'm just easing back

in to this YouTube thing where I teach English.

I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see

you next week with another English lesson. Bye.