This mini episode reveals another “Secret of Native Speakers." This one is a common contraction your textbook might not teach you.
Episode 162 of the Everybody ESL podcast is a grammar mini episode that reveals another Secret of Native Speakers: a very common contraction that your textbooks might not teach you. (Find other Secrets of Native Speakers in episodes 66, 69, 81, 102, 117, and 131.) And send your questions about English and your suggestions for future episodes to EverybodyESL@gmail.com! (And let me know if you’d like to record the introduction to a future episode.)
In this episode, I'm going to tell you another . . . Secret of Native Speakers. That's right—this will be another Secret of Native Speakers. These are things that all native speakers know, but that your textbooks might not tell you about.
Now, for this episode, I'm going to tell you about something that I will bet you have probably heard native speakers say. And maybe you have been confused about it.
Maybe you have heard native speakers say things like this: “These are my cookies, and I am going to eat um all.” These are my cookies, and I am going to eat um all.
Does that sound strange to you? Does it sound like something you have heard before? “These are my cookies and I'm going to eat um all.” I'm going to eat um all. What does that mean? Eat um all. This is a very, very common thing in informal spoken English. This sentence—“I'm going to eat um all” or “I'm going to eat mm all”—is short for “I am going to eat them all.”
This is a kind of contraction that a textbook might not teach you. I'm sure that you are familiar with contractions like isn't or weren't or don't. But you might not be familiar with this contraction. This is a shortened form of them. Often in informal spoken English, the word them will come out as em or um or m. It will be shortened all the way down from them to something like m. And we see that happening in my example sentence: These are my cookies, and I am going to eat um all. These are my cookies, and I'm going to eat mm all. Where the word them is shortened all the way down to m.
Sometimes you will see this in written English, but it is much more common in spoken English. And if you want to write it—if you want to write this contracted, or shortened, form of them—you can spell it like this: ’-e-m. ’-e-m stands for um or m, the shortened form of them.
Now, when you hear somebody say, “m,” you will know: Ah! Maybe this is that contracted or shortened form of them. Because now you know this . . . Secret of Native Speakers.
[A note: If you want to hear other Secrets of Native Speakers, you can find them in episodes 66, 69, 81, 102, 117, and 131.]