I don’t know

Hello and welcome to the Gold Forest English podcast. My name is Jordan and today I want to talk about language that we can use when we don't know things.

Sometimes we are asked a question and we don't know the answer. So the very common thing that people say is, I don't know. And this is good English. This is fine. Nearly every situation. This is acceptable. But it can feel a little bit unfriendly and if your voice is flat or unemotional or fast, it can feel a bit rude. For example, if I say, I don't know. I don't know. There's no emotion in my voice, and that can feel a little bit too cold and unfriendly, a little bit rude. So we could easily just make it a little bit more emotional, a little bit more life in our speech. That helps, that makes things more polite, saying, I don't know. I don't know. So notice that word no is kind of dipping down and up. I don't know Different from I don't know, where it's flat and straightforward. So we can put more life and energy into our voice or we can use other phrases.

So let's have a think about some of these other phrases we could use. One of them very useful is I'm not sure. I'm not sure is softer and more polite compared to I don't know. The meaning is the same, but it just feels a bit more polite. It's especially good for formal situations or customer service situations in a job saying, I'm not sure is better than. I don't know. So that's a basic replacement of, I'm not sure.

But we can also add additional words and phrases to make it softer and even more polite, saying things like, I'm not sure, sorry, or I'm not quite sure. I'm afraid I'm not sure. So using the word sorry: I'm not sure, sorry or Sorry, I'm not sure. Just adding the word sorry, that makes it more polite. Using the word quite. I'm not quite sure. That's more polite and more soft. Or using I'm afraid. I'm afraid I don't know. I'm afraid I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'm afraid. I'm afraid is a very good one. It's very polite. It's very formal. This is especially good for professional situations. If you're working and you're talking to a customer, using I'm afraid, is a very good way of making your sentence more polite. I'm afraid I don't know. I'm afraid I'm not sure. We can put it at the front of the sentence or at the back. I don't know. I'm afraid. I'm not sure. I'm afraid. Putting it at the front or the back doesn't matter. It's the same meaning. It's a much more polite version of I don't know.

Many of those phrases that I just talked about are very polite and appropriate for professional or formal situations. Of course, they are also good for normal and casual situations. But if you want a phrase which is very casual and good for friends and talking with anybody in an extremely informal and casual situation, you could use the phrase beats me. beats me. BEATS. Beats me. Beats me means I don't know. This is very, very casual. It's like an idiom phrase, very, very informal. Perfect for friends and casual situations, but not appropriate for professional situations. So if you want to be casual, you can use beats me. Why did they cancel the class? Beats me?

So, this is very good language to change from, I don't know, which can feel rude or uninterested, especially if the tone of the voice is cold or straight or having a lack of energy, not having any energy or life speaking like a robot, how we say things is very important, the tone matters.

In English, the tone of our speech does not affect the meaning normally, but it does affect the feeling. We use tone most often to show feeling. And when we're saying things like I don't know, we're using our tone to show that we don't know, but we do care. It's important to us. The question is important. The person is important. We do care about it, but we don't know the answer. So we use our tone to help show that. But if you're not sure about using tone correctly, you can use some of the other phrases, which are all polite, more polite than the straight I don't know.

All right. Well, I hope that little talk has given you some helpful things to think about, making our language much more natural and polite using these phrases. So remember, they're things like, I'm not sure instead of I don't know, or adding the extra words like, I'm not quite sure, or I'm sorry, I'm not sure. I'm afraid, I'm not sure. These types of phrases all make our language softer and more polite.

If you want to read more and more examples and more strategies and more tips for making polite phrases in this context, please check out the blog post on goldforestacademy.com. I've got lots of information on there for you to check out.

All right. Well, thank you very much for listening and I hope you are having a good day. I'll see you in the next episode. Goodbye.