Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases FORGIVE AND FORGET and LET BYGONES BE BYGONES:
In this English lesson I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, forgive and forget. When you forgive someone, it means that they did something you didn't like, they apologized and then you forgive them. Basically, if they say, I'm sorry, you say something like, hey, it's no big deal or hey, don't worry about it. So when you forgive someone, it means that you no longer are annoyed with them for doing something wrong. When you forget something it means you simply don't remember it anymore. So we have this phrase in English that we say to people, it's always best to forgive and forget or it's good to forgive and forget. That means if someone does something to you that's annoying, it's probably best just to forgive them and then just forget about it, it's not easy to do. Sometimes it's easy to forgive but it's not easy to forget, sometimes it's easy to forget and then you kind of don't forgive because you're not thinking about it anymore but usually if you can forgive and forget, it's the best way to go.
The second phrase I wanted to talk about is let bygones be bygones. This is an older phrase but it's still used in English, you'll hear it from time to time. If you say to someone, let bygones be bygones, it means that if something happened to them that they didn't like, maybe it happened a long time ago, they should just try not to think about it and they should just forgive the person who did that to them. This is a tricky one because if it's something simple like if you stole my lunch when I was in elementary school, one or two times, I would probably if I met you today and we're both the same age and we're old now, I would probably say, hey let bygones be bygones. I'm not even worried about the fact that you used to steal my lunch in school.
So again, if you say forgive and forget, it means that it's probably best if you can to forgive somebody for wrong doing and then try to forget about it and then when you say, let bygones be bygones, it means that you just want to let something that happened in the past be forgotten and to not worry about it anymore.
Hey, let's look at a comment that we got and this comment actually has the phrase let bygones be bygones in it. This comment is from Jacques Vernier and Jacques says, "Hi Bob, I'm French and I'm addicted to your lessons. "Thanks to you, I learned that I'd been a class clown "in my youth. "I used to throw pieces of chalk at the board behind "my teacher's back." I shouldn't be laughing at this, should I? "But let bygones be bygones, "it was 60 years ago." And my response to Jacques was, well, you must have a great memory to remember so far back. I agree though, let bygones be bygones as it was so long ago. So there is a great example of how to use the phrase, let bygones be bygones.
But I do want to talk a little bit more about forgiveness and forgetting. Phrases like forgive and forget can seem so simple. Like, oh, just forgive and forget. And I know there are small things in life that happened where it's really easy to forgive and forget but I'm also aware that people can be extremely mean to each other.
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