What’s up? No podcast Inglês Online de hoje eu falo sobre a expressão ‘bear with me‘, super comum entre os falantes nativos. Ouça já!

Hi, everyone… how are you? How are you doing? This is Ana Luiza, with another episode of the Inglês Online Podcast. And this is very impromptu… I was just thinking now of this expression. This idiom from the English language, bear with me. And I thought it would make for a nice episode of the podcast. I’m going to give you mainly two examples or, rather, two kinds of situation where this idiom fits like a glove. It’s perfect for a couple of situations and I’m going to explain them to you right now.

One of them would be… let’s say you’re explaining something to someone or… you’re sort of having a chat with someone and you’re telling them a story. And your story has a point, right? You’re going to get to the really interesting part in a few seconds or maybe in a minute, but first you have to kind of set up the whole story. You have to give the other person some background information, right? You have to tell them how… how you’re going to get to that point. You have to tell them the events that led up to that interesting point, to the point that you want to make… To the part of the story that’s really interesting, so it’s going to take maybe a minute or two. You have to tell this person about a few events; you have to give them some information. You have to set up the story but the other person doesn’t know… The other person is waiting; they’re expecting to hear that interesting part, so you tell this person… Just bear with me. Bear with me.

“So, the other day I went to this place or that place and I met with this person and that person and this happened or that happened…” You’re telling your friend – you’re telling them a bunch of stuff that they don’t really understand right now. What does that have to do with the really interesting thing that you said you were going to tell them? but you know it’s important; you know that this is important information for the other person to understand the really interesting part that is coming in the next minute or two. So you tell this person “Just bear with me while I tell you the story”. Basically, bear with me means “Just have a little patience”, okay? Stay with me, don’t go away, have a little patience while I give you all this important information and we’re going to get to the really interesting point very soon.

And the other example, you guys, I’ll give you a real… A very real example in my life when something happens to my website. My website is full of basic English exercises. There’s a whole section of “Inglês Básico” at Inglês Online which is just about interactive English exercises and it’s really cool, it’s very popular, people love it… Let’s say, for some reason, there’s a problem and all of a sudden none of the exercise pages are available. So I go to Inglês Online and I write a post, and I say: “Guys, unfortunately we have a problem with the exercises. We have a problem with the plugin that we’re using to provide the exercise for you. We’re working on it as fast as we can… Please bear with us and we’re going to get it fixed as soon as we can.”

I’m asking you guys to bear with us – just have patience and bear with us. Have patience because we’re working on it as fast as we can, okay?

So bear with me – that’s how you’re going to hear it most of the time. Very, very common expression… So listen to this episode a couple of times, get used to it and I’m sure you will start noticing this expression, ok?

Talk to you next time. Bye!

Key expressions

Vocabulary

impromptu = de improviso

fits like a glove = cai como uma luva, perfeito para tal situação

set up the whole story = preparar, criar toda a história

led up to  = passado de ‘lead up to’ (conduzir a, levar a). Nota: falantes nativos de inglês frequentemente escrevem a forma passada como “lead up to”, o que é incorreto.

we’re working on it as fast as we can = nós estamos trabalhando nisso o mais rápido possível

get used to it = se acostumar ou habituar-se com algo