AEE 2420: Grateful to or Grateful For? What’s the Difference?
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This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2420. Grateful to or grateful for? What's the difference? Welcome to the All Ears English podcast downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection with your American host,

Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.

Today, we answer a listener question about the difference between two similar phrases. Plus, find out how to cultivate more happiness in your life and through your connections.

Are you still translating from your native language into English in your head? Are you always getting confused between the different grammar tenses? Let's figure out what you need to work on. Find your current English level with our five-minute quiz at allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. Hey, Aubrey. How are you today? I'm great. How are you, Lindsay? Good. Aubrey, what is something that you're grateful for?

Oh, man, I am grateful for public school in the United States. I have met a couple of people who homeschool lately. So they are teaching their children school during the day at home. And I don't, I just don't understand. I could never. I love my children, but it's really helpful to have some time to miss each other during the day. And so I'm impressed any parent who's patient enough to teach their children all day and then have them all weekend and then like, it couldn't be me, but I'm impressed. It is impressive.

You know what I'm grateful for? I'm grateful for physical movement, being able to like, you know, having my, just being able to physically move because when I move, I feel better mentally. If I go for a walk, I feel better. So I'm grateful for my health. Absolutely. Yes, definitely. Two good things to be grateful for. We got a great question about some of the words we use when expressing gratitude that do have a subtle difference. So I'm excited to dive into this today.

All right. I'm going to go ahead and read the question. This is from Asami from Tokyo, Japan. All right. I've been listening to your podcast for seven years. Aubrey. That's amazing. That is awesome. Oh my gosh. We're so happy to have a seven-year listener. Impressive.

All right. Thank you for answering some of my questions on the show before. Today, I have another question. I'm not sure about the difference between grateful and thankful. Also, what preposition should I use with grateful and thankful? I'd love to hear your clarification in a future episode. Thank you all so much. Best, Asami. Beautiful.

I know I love this question. This is so fascinating on so many levels. First of all, this vocabulary is very interesting. But also, we want to be expressing gratitude, right? A great way to connect with others to express that you're grateful for them or grateful to them for something. But you do need the right vocab. You need to know which prepositions to use because the meaning will be slightly different.

Yeah. And not to mention, you know, the neuroscience side of things. If we spend time expressing what we're grateful for, we build that muscle in our mind, the neurons come together, and then we start searching for other things we're grateful for, and it actually shifts your mindset. It makes you a happier person. Absolutely. I feel that. I feel that.

feel that as I express, or if you fill out a gratitude journal, you feel your mindset shift to that attitude of gratitude. We talk about it. It's so true. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. So guys go ahead and hit the follow button right now to let us know that you're grateful for our show. Right. And also to make sure you don't stop following All Ears English, follow the show, get five episodes a week. All right. Good stuff. Awesome. So let's answer the question here. First of all,

Often, grateful and thankful are used interchangeably, but there is a slight difference.

So, first of all, thankful. How do we use thankful, Lindsay? All right. So, usually thankful refers to a less profound, more of a passing feeling of appreciation. It could be a response to a specific act or a benefit. Exactly. Yes, right. Thankfulness is sometimes focused more on a specific event or a person. And then gratitude, we'll talk about that in a moment, that that is more broad. Okay.

more more appreciation for life in general for like deeper things okay like for thanksgiving right we often say what are you thankful for today right yes in that case i feel like i could say i'm grateful for my family that's where they are often used interchangeably right so the good news is you can pretty well use either or and it is going to work

right? You're sharing your grateful whichever you say, but native English speakers will often choose one or the other. So we're going to share why that is, why there is this slight difference today. All right, let's get into it Aubrey. Where do we start today?

Yeah. So when it comes to thankfulness, right, it's usually expressed through words or actions. The other thing to think about is we talk about gratitude often being more like a mindset, someone's overall mindset. They're like grateful for the world and that's affecting how they're acting. And thankfulness, we don't really talk about on such a broad scale, right? But so we're going to first talk about thankful with some examples, keeping in mind what Lindsay said, that often we can swap this out for grateful. They're pretty interchangeable. But

with the different prepositions we use. So first of all, thankful to. When would we say we're thankful to? Yeah, so thankful to a person for something that they've done. So for example, I'm thankful to my son's teacher for helping him succeed.

Or he was thankful to his daughter for the birthday card. But really, it's thankful to a person or even an organization. I'm thankful to this company. I'm thankful to this country. We can say that as well. Often we'll use grateful instead because those might be bigger feelings. But you could. You could say thankful to. It's just something that has been done either sort of generally by someone.

a country or something like that or by a person. Nice. I like it. Yeah. And then thankful to be something would be our next category. So he's thankful to be a part of their group.

Right. Or she was thankful to be working for such a good company. So this often where it's very similar. Right. We're either thankful to a person for something or we're thankful to be something. This might be an emotion. I'm thankful to be happy today. I'm thankful to be healthy today. Mobile today. Like you said, Lindsay.

Yes, I love it. And again, don't forget, they can be interchanged for sure. So these are not hard and fast rules, but these are nice categories where we can start to imagine examples. Next one is thankful for something like at the Thanksgiving dinner table, we might say, what are you thankful for? Right? Share that. I'm thankful for my neighbors.

What else, Aubrey? Yeah, or we're thankful for the nice weather. So it's interesting when you're thinking about the prepositions. If you're talking about something specific a neighbor did, you'd say, I'm thankful to my next door neighbor for being such a good person, for being there for me. And then if you're talking more generally, I'm thankful for my neighbors in general. Yes. Yeah. So we can make our sentences a little bit more complex there, right? Exactly. Yes. Love it.

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Okay, Aubrey, now let's dive into grateful. So what is this and how is it different? Yeah, grateful implies a deeper and more long-lasting, more sustained sense of thankfulness, of appreciation. So that mindset of appreciation for something. Okay, yeah. So often we're saying this to a person. So we're grateful to a person for something they've done. For example, I'm grateful to my parents for all they've done for me. And yeah, if you really reflect...

on, you know, at least many people like think about what your parents have done for you over your lifetime is kind of amazing. Yeah, right. It's so true. And this is where it does get interesting that different when a native speaker would use grateful instead of thankful. So it would be it would feel a little strange for me to say I'm thankful to my parents for all they've done for me because that does feel more momentary, not quite as big.

And I don't think my mom would be like, thankful? Why aren't you saying grateful? But there is this little bit of a feeling that it's a smaller feeling. So I would say grateful always. I'm grateful to my parents for all they've done.

And this is a real nuance. So you could get away with saying that, like you said, your mom's not going to say, oh, you're using that wrong. She's going to say, oh, thank you for saying that. Right. But so there's a nuance, but we like to share the nuances of English here on this show. Right. Yeah. Right. And this is interesting because when I first started planning this episode, I was like, oh, they're interchangeable. They mean exactly the same thing.

And then I started thinking about some of these examples and Googling. I'm seeing people saying like, oh, gratitude is this bigger feeling. And I started really thinking about, you know, would I say I'm thankful to my mom or grateful to my mom? And I'm like, I agree that this is grateful in general is used for bigger, more sustained appreciation, deeper, bigger feelings. Deeper, bigger and thankful. So a little bit more superficial. Yeah.

Right? A little more superficial. Yeah. What's one more example? I might say he said he's grateful to his friends for their support. So if he's really going through something, grateful for this support. Yes, you could say thankful, but it does feel like a little bit of a smaller emotion.

Yeah. It's like if you say that to them, they're going to feel that more deeply if you say the word grateful rather than thankful slightly. Yeah. I love it. Number two, next one, grateful for something, right? I'm grateful for my parents. I'm grateful for my health. What else, Aubrey? Yeah. She's grateful for his honesty, right? All of these bigger emotions. Yes, you could say I'm thankful for my parents, but grateful just feels very subtle. It does feel bigger. Yeah. And I guess there would be times when...

it would be inappropriate to use, like in these examples. So another example, I'm thankful you arrived early. If you said, I'm grateful you arrived early, it's too big. The word's too big for that scenario. Good point, Lindsay, right? Because this should be sort of a fleeting, you're thanking someone for something. It would be strange. Like every time you're like, thanks, thank you, to be like, I'm grateful for you, would be strange. It's too much. It's too much. You might make people just kind of step back from you, right? Yeah.

What else, Aubrey? What else do we need to- And then we just want to point out that we often use these with no preposition at all, right? I'm thankful you arrived early. I'm grateful you invited me, or I'm grateful that you invited me. So often we don't have a preposition. We're just saying what we're grateful or thankful happened. Yes. Yes. Wow. This is really nuanced. I love it. Let's do a role play and start to look at the differences one more time.

So just like you mentioned, we often talk about gratitude at Thanksgiving in the United States. So this is perfect. You and I are at a Thanksgiving dinner. It's the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the word thankful is Thanksgiving. It's good to at least have one day to like really focus on it, even though we should be practicing gratitude throughout the year, right? Yes, of course. All right. Would anyone like to share something they're grateful for?

Well, Aubrey, I'm grateful to you for inviting me to this lovely dinner. Oh, I'm thankful you came. I'm also grateful to be surrounded by so many amazing friends.

Same. I'm grateful for all of you. Nice. Maybe this was a Friendsgiving. Sometimes people do Friendsgivings, right? Maybe they can't travel to their family or they're not close to their family. Their friends become their family and they call it a Friendsgiving. Yeah, we did that in New York City. We were in New York City for a couple of Thanksgivings and our family was all very far. So we had a Thanksgiving. It was very fun. Except my husband was vegan and we had to have a tofurkey. It was like a turkey made of tofu and it was disgusting. No.

No offense to anyone who loves tofurkey. It wasn't for me. Interesting. Or maybe I didn't prepare it correctly. So the whole group had to have tofurkey. It was your husband, the only one that was vegan? No, we did have a turkey as well for others, but I tried the tofurkey and it did not win the competition of excluding entrees.

It's hard. It's hard. Oh, wow. That's so fun. Great. So yeah, Friendsgivings are fun. I had one in Boston too. It's a very different vibe and dynamic than with your family, of course. So it's fun. Yes. What did we say here, Aubrey? Yeah, I first said, would anyone like to share something they're grateful for? So this, we're maybe sitting around the table. I'm like, oh, let's start saying what we're grateful for. Sometimes we do this at Thanksgiving dinner. And it's interesting to choose grateful here. I'm sort of asking everyone to

to share like the bigger things we're grateful for, the bigger emotions, right? And of course you could then just be like, oh, I'm thankful for this turkey. But you probably wouldn't say grateful for the turkey, like for the food, because it's a bigger emotion. It's more long lasting. Grateful for, you could get away with it, like we said, right? You could get away with it. But yeah, we kind of want our words to match our emotions or how profound our statements are, right? That's what we go for at the B2C1C2 level.

Right? Right. And if you're going to say like, oh, I'm grateful for this wine, you might even be sort of trying to be funny, like intentionally using a word that's for like bigger emotions. Right? I'm sure we've all done that as well. So you're going to hear natives use both as well. Native English speakers will use them quite interchangeably. But yeah, you can reserve grateful a little more for bigger feelings and know that you're going to get the tone right.

And then I said, "Well, Aubrey, I'm grateful to you for inviting me to this lovely dinner." So I'm grateful to you. Grateful to you. Good. Yes. And then I say, "Oh, I'm thankful you came." So this is with no preposition, right? I could say, "I'm thankful that you came," or "I'm thankful to you for coming," but that gets really wordy. It would probably be like, "Oh, I'm thankful you came." Yeah. Good. And then I said, "I'm also grateful to be surrounded by so many amazing friends."

Yes. Another big emotion here. Like I'm grateful for all of you, for all of you great friends. And then I said, same, I'm grateful for all of you too. So these are bigger emotions. The one time we use thankful here, it's like, I'm thankful you came. Thanks for coming is what that means, right? Which is the kind of smaller, more fleeting thing. Yeah. Thanks is a little more fleeting than gratitude. I love it. Aubrey, what's our takeaway for today?

Well, I think expressing gratitude is one of the best ways to connect in English. Like you said, Lindsay, it's also one of the best ways to have a positive mindset and stay in a positive headspace, but also such a great way to connect to just talk with someone about what each of you are grateful for.

Yeah, it really does. It's incredible. Just try it if you don't believe us. It really uplifts your heart. And then, like we said, there is neuroscience that proves that you then start searching for things that you're grateful for and it does rewire your brain. There's been some science done on this in recent years. So super interesting. You can't argue with neuroscience, right? You can't. You can't. And I've experienced it myself, so we can confirm. That is true. All right. Great episode today, Aubrey. We'll talk to you very soon. Yes. See you guys next time. All right. Bye. Bye.

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