STOP ASKING ‘WHAT’ – Smart Ways to Say You Don’t Understand

不要一句what走天下了，当你没有听清对方说什么或是你听清了但是却不懂是什么意思的时候，不要一直what, what, what 了，今天就和美女Marina一起来学习下老外在这种情况下都会怎么说吧？

以下为视频部主要内容概括，大家可以借这个机会练习一下自己的听力，尽量不要看视频上的字幕。

Hey guys, welcome to my channel! This is Linguamarina! What is your natural reaction to this? WHAAAT? This is a way a lot of you ask people to repeat things. There are other ways to ask people to repeat something and we are going to talk about these things in today’s video.

We are going to start with formal ways. For example, British people often use “pardon?” When they say it, they mean that they didn’t get what you were saying, so you are supposed to repeat.

Some other formal short phrases that you can use are:

• Sorry?
• Excuse me?
• I beg your pardon?

There are also some certain phrases that would help you out in the situation when you don’t understand something. The questions below are always polite and professional to use in a conversation:

• Excuse me, I didn’t catch you. Could you repeat this again, please?
• I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Can you repeat, please?
• I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Could you repeat, please?
• Excuse me, I hear this word for the first time. Could you explain what it means?
• I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand what you mean by…

Of course, there are informal ways of asking people to repeat things. However, you need to make sure you maintain the right intonation. Here are some of the short phrases you can use:

• What did you say?
• Huh?
• ‘Scuse me?
• What was that?
• Hmm?

Now, let’s cover some slang phrases:

• Come again?
• Pass that by me again?
• I don’t get it

And I want to wrap up this video with idioms that you can use in the situation when you don’t understand what the other person is saying to you:

• This is all Greek to me
• I think our wires are crossed
• That was as clear as mud
• Everything you said is just a word salad

Time codes:

0:48 Formal ways

2:41 Informal ways

4:20 Slang

5:00 Idioms

BTW,有没有觉得这个美女有点像国内的某个明星，我第一次也是因为这个才看了视频的，然后就爱上了这个频道。