BBC Learning English - Disagreeing | Текст песни

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• BBC Learning English
• Disagreeing

Jackie: Hello, welcome to the programme, with me, Jackie Dalton. This
programme is all about expressions you can use when you think someone
is wrong about something and you want to disagree with them.

We’re going to do this with the help of British Prime Minister, Tony
Blair. He was recently interviewed by John Humphries, a BBC journalist.
Tony Blair disagreed with quite a lot of the things John Humphries said
and we’re going to look at some of the language he used when he did this
– language you could use in all kinds of situations when you disagree
with someone. In the first example, Tony Blair responds to John
Humphries by using one of the simplest words in the English language.

Tony Blair
- Shouldn’t you be apologising to those people?
- No, I don’t think we should be apologising.

Jackie: ‘No’ – a direct way of disagreeing. Be careful about how you use such
direct language. As with a lot of language we’ll hear today, your tone of
voice can be very important in how you come across. This person
disagrees quite politely.

Example
- You always come to work late.
- No, I don’t.

Jackie: But here, she sounds more aggressive.

Example
- No I don’t.

Jackie: Listen to this next clip. What phrase does Tony Blair use in these
examples to express his disagreement?

Tony Blair
- You see, I mean, I don’t agree with that. I understand that’s the argument against what we’ve done, but I don’t agree with it.
- Well, I don’t agree with that at all…
- I’m a great admirer of Kofi’s, but we obviously disagree about this issue.

Jackie: He uses the verb ‘to agree’ in the negative – ‘I don’t agree’ and he uses the
verb ‘to disagree’ – ‘I disagree’. Now we’ll hear Tony Blair using a slightly
more formal structure:

Tony Blair
- And, it’s made this country a more dangerous place.
- Well I don’t accept that, either.

Jackie: ‘I don’t accept that’ – another way of saying you don’t agree with something that’s just been said.

Tony Blair
- The failure of that responsibility-
- Well, I don’t accept that we failed in that responsibility.

Jackie: Sometimes you may agree with part of what someone says, but disagree with other parts. What structure does Tony Blair use to do that here?

John Humphries and Tony Blair
- …many of them loyal to their own warlords.
- Well, I think that although it is true to say that there are far too many parts of the police that are sectarian and so on-
- They’re…

Jackie: Tony Blair shows that he agrees with some of what John Humphries has said, but he tries to go on to say that there are other things he disagrees with. We know he disagrees with part of what John has said because he uses the word ‘although’ at the beginning of his sentence: ‘Although it’s true to say…’ He never quite finishes his sentence to tell us what he doesn’t agree with so let’s listen to a more complete example of that phrase in use.

Example
- He doesn’t work hard enough and he’s bad for the company!
- Although it’s true to say he doesn’t work as much as he should, I think he’s very clever and could help the company a lot.

Jackie: You could also use ‘while’ instead of ‘although’.

Examples
- While it’s true to say he doesn’t work as much as he should, I think he’s very clever and he could help the company a lot.

Jackie: In this next clip, John Humphries says something that Tony Blair
disagrees with. What’s the phrase that Tony Blair uses to interrupt him?

John Humphries and Tony Blair
- …elected their own government, we’re now telling-
- Well, hang on a minute John! They excluded…
- Oh no well you added those bits-
- Well hang on-
- You added those bits-
- No, no, before any of those things…

Jackie: ‘Hang on a minute…’ this sometimes just means ‘wait’, but here it’s a way of saying ‘Stop, I don’t agree and there’s something I want to say.’ He then corrects him.

Tony Blair
- …electe

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