English phrases explained: Good grief & For goodness' sake

English phrases explained, good grief, and for goodness sake. When you're studying English, I recommend learning phrases and not just individual words. Because when you only study individual words, it's hard to put them together into a phrase. But when you study phrases, then you can use the complete phrase in your speaking, and it's much easier. However, the problem with phrases is that sometimes you might hear or see an expression that doesn't seem to make sense. This happens with a lot of idioms and informal expressions. And you might be completely confused by a phrase, especially if you see it in a movie or if you hear a native speaker say it. It can be confusing. My students ask me about phrases all the time. And today, I'll explain two expressions, good grief and for goodness sake. If you're interested in learning more phrases, and especially learning them inside the context of conversations, come check out my everyday English speaking courses. You can click on the link in the video or in the description to learn more. Good grief, that expression seems really strange. Grief normally refers to the feeling of being sad, like when someone dies. So why would you ever say good grief? Well, this is a perfect example of why you can't translate a lot of these expressions directly. You can't interpret them word by word. Instead, you need to learn these phrases as whole expressions in context. So, we use good grief as an exclamation for surprise or shock and often frustration. Or to say something like, that's ridiculous. Here's an example. Let's say you are having a really bad morning. You woke up late, and then you tried to make breakfast, but you accidentally burn your breakfast. And you know, things are going wrong, and your kids are fussy. And then when you go out to your car to go to work, you turn the key, and your car won't start. So you might say, good grief, my car won't start. So good grief is an expression of your surprise, and you're also frustrated and annoyed by this ridiculous situation. Another good example would be, let's say you work in an office, and your manager creates some crazy rule. Like he says, in order to save paper, you can't print out more than 10 pages per week. But let's say your job needs a lot of things printed out. So when talking with your coworkers, you might say, good grief, that's such a ridiculous rule. Again, it's an expression of frustration, annoyance, or saying something is ridiculous. Another similar expression is, for goodness sake. This is another one that you can't translate literally. And again, we use it for shock or ridiculousness. For example, if your son has been playing video games for the last six hours, and you really want him to stop playing video games, you might say, turn off the video game. You've been playing for six hours, for goodness sake. This expression shows your annoyance or frustration with the situation. Or if you're talking with a friend, and that friend keeps interrupting you, then you might say, for goodness sake, stop interrupting me. So you can see how these are used just to add a little bit more emotion to the statement you're making. There are variations of this expression. Some people say, for Christ's sake. But other people prefer not to use that, because it's a little bit religious, and it might offend people who are Christians. And there are also variations of this expression that include a swear word, but I'm not going to say those. But the expressions good grief and for goodness sake, these are okay to use. They're not offensive. They're just very innocent ways to express annoyance. Again, you can learn hundreds more phrases to improve your English speaking skills inside my courses. More than a thousand students have enjoyed my everyday English speaking courses, and I hope you will too. That's all for today. Thanks for joining me, and I'll talk to you next time.