How to Express Humility Learn English Grammar
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hi everybody my name is alicia in this
lesson i’m going to
talk about how to express humility
in english let’s get started okay first
i want to define what is humility
humility humility is a noun
humility is a state of
not thinking you are better than
other people so humility
is it’s considered a good state so we
don’t think
like i’m better than that person or
that person is below me or something
like that
humility is considered a positive state
to be in
so there are a couple of different
situations where it’s common
to express humility first i’m going to
talk about some expressions you can use
if you receive a special award of some
kind
or if you receive kind of like an
honorable recognition
these two are some cases uh at work
or maybe in your studies where it’s
important
to express humility so first let’s take
a look at these expressions
we would use these when we receive
awards
so the first expression is i am
honored to accept this award
so a key word here is honored so honor
is the root so that means it’s like
respectable
so it’s something that’s very special
and i
feel appreciative i want to say thank
you
and show that i respect this situation
i am honored to accept
so to accept means like it’s okay i will
take it i’m honored to accept
this award so this is how maybe lots of
award
speeches begin if you have watched um
english speaking
awards shows you might hear something
similar to this and this similarly
it’s a great honor to receive
this award so these two they really mean
the same thing
just slightly different ways of saying
it here we’re using honor as a noun
so it’s a great honor or i am honored
they really mean the same thing
here i’m using the verb to receive
instead of to
accept um in this case they do mean the
same thing they mean like
to take except in some cases
can have the idea or have the feeling of
something being like
okay where receive just means like
i’m going to take this like paperwork
i’ve received your paperwork i’m putting
it over here
whereas like to accept something means
like to confirm
something so for example like you accept
a student
to a university so receiving is like
just taking them but accepting a student
to a university is like saying okay
great like you’re part of the university
now
to accept an award is similar like we
had to approve
the acceptance of the award so there’s a
very very small difference there
in general in this case these two really
mean the same thing they’re just
different ways to say
a similar expression let’s take a look
though at the third one here
i greatly appreciate your consideration
i greatly appreciate
your consideration this would be okay to
use
if you receive an award maybe this could
be sentenced to
like i’m honored to accept this award i
greatly appreciate your consideration
here your you could change this if you
like
your means the group of people
who decided to give you the award or the
group of people who
gave you like special recognition or
gave you an honor
i greatly appreciate your consideration
if this is like a board of directors at
a company
you could replace your with the board’s
consideration i greatly appreciate the
board’s consideration
so this is a good very general
expression it doesn’t have to be for an
award
just for special recognition is okay
like you get a special bonus for example
wow i greatly appreciate your
consideration
all right so let’s continue to two more
samples
these are for more like an honorable
recognition
or like you have received an honorable
invitation to something like
to join a very respected project
or project like an organization or
you’re going to participate
in something an exciting project that is
very respected
so first sentence is i am
grateful to have been able to
participate
in this project so this is actually
a sentence we would use if uh the
speaker in this case me
if i have finished my role
in the project i am grateful to have
been
able so this means i had the life
experience
of participating in this project i had
this experience
i was able to so that sounds
again it’s like you’re lowering yourself
you’re making yourself
sound a little bit lower that’s that
humility point here
i’m grateful to have been able to
participate
this sounds much more polite this
expresses humility
much more than i’m happy i could join
like
i’m happy i could join doesn’t express
the same level of appreciation
so grateful shows your respect uh for
this situation
and this i’m grateful to have been able
to so that means it sounds like
um maybe in another situation this would
not have been possible
so i’m grateful to have been able to
participate in this project
really shows your respect for that
project
similarly here i am thrilled to have the
opportunity to participate
so thrilled thrilled this means like
excited very excited
but it it sounds a little more formal in
this case so it’s a stronger word that
means excited
i am thrilled to have the opportunity
to participate so this is probably for
an upcoming project
here i used to have been
able to suggesting that the project has
concluded it’s finished here i’m
thrilled to
have the opportunity to participate a
sentence like this is something used
when we’re going to start something new
again here i’m using some words that
show
my respect for the situation i am
thrilled to
have the opportunity so opportunity
means
chance but opportunity sounds more
formal than
chance so i’m thrilled that like
there’s this great chance and i want to
express it more
formally to show that i respect the
situation
so these are two good ones you can use
for like an
honorable a project you can join or you
receive like recognition
for participating in a project so again
this is for something that’s probably
finished
or is going to finish very soon and this
is probably for something
that’s coming up in the future okay
before i get to this point i want to go
to the second
group the second group of expressions
here
is expressing gratitude so that means
ways to say
thank you expressing gratitude for your
teammates for your community for your
family and so on
for the people around you so a key to
expressing humility
is that you don’t focus on yourself only
it’s not just
me me me i did all this stuff on my own
but who are the people i worked with so
how do i express my appreciation for
those people
on my team or in my community so some
expressions you can use
this one is very general thank you so
much
for your support thank you so much for
your support
so a company can use this with their
customers like in an email to their
customers who have helped them
in some way we could use this on youtube
for example like if i want to say
say to the viewers who like the video or
leave comments i could say thank you so
much for your support
so this is a polite expression that
shows
your appreciation for a group of people
or for
just one person even and it also sounds
a little bit
friendly so thank you so much for your
support you can remove this
this so much and make the sentence thank
you for your support
i like to say thank you so much for your
support so i think it shows a little bit
more strongly the appreciation another
one we can use
is this i or we couldn’t
do it without you i couldn’t do it
without you
we couldn’t do it without you a
variation on this
is i couldn’t have done it
without you i couldn’t have done it
without you is what it sounds like at
native speed couldn’t have done it
without you
so couldn’t have done it without you
means again
something like this grateful to have
been we use that
couldn’t have done it without you means
that
something happened in the past and
without
that person or without that group the
project
or the action would not have been
possible
so we say in the present i could not
pass i could not have done it without
you
so we’re using perfect tense to describe
that relationship there
so here i’m not using that i’m just
using simple
uh we couldn’t do it without you i
couldn’t do it without you
so for example like our channel
so we couldn’t do it without you
where you is our viewers so in this case
it in this sentence refers to the
activities of the speaker
so in our case we couldn’t do it without
you means we could not make
the channel without our viewers like the
viewers are important
for us so that we can get your feedback
and so that we can try to make uh
informative and from informative videos
that help people so in this case that’s
our
it it so you means the people around
the person speaking so it just refers to
the activities there
so other companies might say like we
couldn’t do it without you like we
couldn’t make our
products without our customers that’s a
very common one
or maybe an athlete could say it i
couldn’t do it without the fans
maybe an entertainer or an athlete would
say something like that
so it’s to express their appreciation
and to say like my job would not be
possible
without you that’s what this really
means
that’s a breakdown of the sentence okay
let’s move on to the next expression
which is thank you to everyone on our
team
thank you to everyone on our team this
is very general
um some other variations are like thank
you to our wonderful team members
um thank you to our amazing team and so
on
so this can be used for your
work you can use this in sports you can
use this
at school if you’re working in a group
project you could change
team to group thank you to everyone in
our group
though we change the preposition on our
team
or in our group we do not use on a group
we use
in a group so this is really great
for talking about your colleagues and
your
so for example if i want to use this
expression
to talk about our team here i could say
thank you to everyone on our team for
their hard
work something like that is a good way
to express appreciation for your
teammates
okay onward to the next set of
expressions this one
i made this one about family this i
thought was a nice
follow-up to the award-related
expressions we talked about earlier
so you receive an award for example i am
honored to accept this reward
i greatly appreciate your consideration
uh thank you to everyone on our team for
their hard work
i would also like to thank my family for
their support
so this is something you might hear at
an awards speech
i have here i would like this is one
situation
where it’s natural not to reduce to i’d
i’d like to thank i would like to thank
my family
this sounds more formal and in this
situation
accepting an award it sounds more
natural to be more formal so it’s okay
here
i would like to thank my family for
their support of course you can change
this i would like to thank my wife i
would like to thank my husband
i would like to thank my partner for his
or her or their
support so you can change this as well
too
but generally support is a nice word to
use that’s kind of
open okay onward this one is good for
like a community related event like a
volunteer event or something organized
in your town or
city thank you to all the community
members
who volunteered their time and effort
their time and effort this is i think a
good expression to include here
you could say thank you to all the
community members who volunteered
that’s great but showing that you
recognize
the other people gave you their time
and their effort so effort means like
their energy they took action to do
something
so they participated and they gave time
and effort for something that you put
together
is a really important thing to notice i
think it’s an important thing to
recognize
so this is a good one for a community
event
of course you could use just people
thank you to all the people who
volunteered their time and effort too
but if this is like a city or a town
event it might be good
to consider your local community by
using
a word such as this okay so
i want to finish this lesson with just a
couple
very small points we commonly use as
few expressions when responding to
complements
so a reminder a compliment is when
someone gives you
a nice feedback gives you a nice comment
about something
and you want to express humility like oh
it’s not so great or no
no no that feeling so these are a few
very common ways we do that
let’s imagine we get a compliment
someone says i like your shirt
you can respond by saying ah you’re too
kind
you’re too kind you could also say ah
it’s
nothing we’ll often say something like
that’s nothing like this is
old or this was so cheap so we kind of
put ourselves down sometimes in this way
sometimes
it depends a little bit on the person uh
you could say oh
that’s so nice of you to say that’s so
nice of you to say
or you could just say oh thanks as well
too
ah so awww here means ah ah
thanks um so it depends on the person
if you compliment someone and they say
like ah it’s nothing
that’s a fairly natural response some
people
when you compliment will just say thank
you i bought it at such and such store
that’s also very natural but if you
would like to express
humility you can use one of these
expressions
i tend to say i tend to use something
like this
i uh not it’s nothing but i will use a
specific
adjective in the moment like if someone
compliments my shirt
i’ll say oh this this is so old like it
was so cheap
i usually choose a specific adjective
related to the compliment
or if someone says like i like your new
haircut i would say oh me too
but you know i can’t style it perfectly
like i tend
to choose like a specific point that i
can
kind of make myself sound a little bit
lower
in that moment so that’s kind of up to
you you can kind of listen to the
compliment
and choose how you want to respond if
you’re not sure
you don’t know how to use this you can
just say thank you i appreciate it
so these are just a couple ways that we
respond
to compliments everyday small points
in daily life so i hope that this lesson
was helpful
i hope you learned some good ways to
express humility and i hope that you
have many reasons
to use these expressions it’s very
positive i think
so if you have any questions or comments
please feel free to let us know in the
comments section of this video
also you can feel free to practice
making a speech if you want like an
award acceptance speech that might be
interesting
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