Polite English: How to ask people to repeat themselves

Do you often not understand people or fail to hear what they are saying? Native English speakers often speak unclearly or too fast, making it difficult to understand their words. In this lesson, I will teach you some polite ways of asking people to repeat what they said. You will learn expressions such as,“pardon“, “I didn’t quite hear you“, “Could you speak more slowly, please?“ and more. Never miss a word again and become an even better English speaker with this useful lesson. And if you need me to repeat anything, just replay the video! TRANSCRIPT Hi. This is Gill at , and today we’re going to have a lesson about what to do if someone says something to you and you can’t hear them properly, or it’s not very clear what they say, and you need to ask them to repeat what it was they said. And this could happen anywhere, anywhere in the world, but especially if you’re in maybe a big city where there are people of many different nationalities; cities like London, Toronto, New York, anywhere really in the world. So people with different accents, either because they’re from other countries and English is not their first language, or even within one country, like within the UK, we have many different accents from different parts of the country, from different cities, from Scotland, Wales, Ireland. There are all different accents. And if someone has a strong accent, it’s more difficult to understand them. So this lesson is about asking people to say again what they said. I have to do it even if someone says something in English, which is my first language, I sometimes have to ask people to say something again. So it happens to everybody. Okay, so let’s have a look at some of the words you can use to deal with this situation. All right? So, a very useful single word is just to say: “Sorry?“ with a sort of rising in the voice. Question: “Sorry? Sorry?“ And also, I’ve put body language at the bottom here, but it’s quite important. You can sort of go like this, and say: “Sorry?“ and lean towards them a little bit with your hand by your ear. So especially if they also are not English... If their first language is not English, they will understand from this that you didn’t understand what they said. So a little bit of body language helps as well. So: “Sorry?“ is very useful and polite, because we need it to be polite as well. So, polite. So: “Sorry?“ is a polite way of asking someone to repeat. At one time, there was also the word: “Pardon?“ which is a little bit old fashioned now. So, to say: “Pardon?“ it’s a little... It used to be very polite, and children were taught to say: “Pardon?“ but now it’s a little bit old fashioned, and people might laugh at you if you use: “Pardon?“ So, see what other people say to you, and then you can follow what they say, but “Pardon?“ is a little bit old now. Okay, now things not to say which are not polite. You don’t just say: “What?“ because that is rather rude. So, don’t say: “What? What?“ Very rude, especially with a loud voice and making a funny face. “What?“ Not very nice at all, so don’t say: “What?“ And don’t say things like: “Eh? Eh?“ A lot of English people might say: “Eh?“ but that’s not polite either. So... Or: “Uh?“ that’s not polite either, just to say: “Uh? Uh?“ No. Okay, so the polite way, really, as one word is just to say: “Sorry?“ and then the person will probably understand you need them to say it again. But there are longer sentences you can use as well, in addition to: “Sorry?“ just to give you a wider range of options. And the three main things about what... The way we all speak is clarity: what we say should be clear. I hope I’m being clear in this lesson. So, that’s the adjective “clear“, and the noun is “clarity“. Clarity of speech. Okay? So it must be clear. The pace or the speed. If people speak very quickly, it’s difficult to follow what they’re saying; to understand what they’re saying. So the pace should be fairly slow and regular. Okay. And the volume, how loud or quiet somebody is. If someone speaks very quietly... You probably can’t hear me at the moment. So some people are a bit shy, and they don’t speak very loud, loudly. So the volume, how loud people are is important. So sometimes you need to ask somebody to speak more loudly, so we have different sentences for these.