My cat's making noises.
Monty, please stop.
Hi guys. Welcome back to English with Max.
In this video we're going to look at various questions that might be useful
when you're talking with people in English, particularly native speakers.
These are mainly things that you can say if you have difficulties understanding
or hearing the other person. This video is aimed at intermediate students, but it
might also be good for you if you have an advanced level, because I've often
heard advanced students make mistakes with these sentences. If you think you
might forget these questions, then I recommend that you get a notebook and
write them down. If you would like to watch this video with English subtitles,
you just need to turn on the captions. Remember to subscribe and to hit the
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The first question is something you can say if you
didn't hear or understand what the person said. It's: "Could you please repeat that?"
Or: "Could you repeat that, please?" With this construction you can either
put the "please" after the "could you" or at the end of the sentence. You can also
replace "could" with "can", so it would be: "Can you please repeat that?" But "could" is
just a little more polite. You can also use the construction: "Would you mind..."
Then it would be: "Would you mind repeating that, please?" But I think it's just easier
and shorter to say: "Could you please repeat that?"
Now be careful with this. You cannot say: "Could you please repeat?"
That's incorrect. You need to put something after the
"repeat". So you have to say: "Could you please repeat that?" Or: "Could you please
repeat what you said?" To make this question more polite, you can first say:
"I'm sorry." Or just: "Sorry." Either one is fine.
For example: "I'm sorry, could you please repeat that?" And you can
add "I'm sorry" or "sorry" to any of the questions in this video. In English,
particularly in British English we like to apologise a lot, so it's not strange
to say "sorry" quite often. Another thing you can say if
you didn't hear or understand what the person said is: "Sorry, what was that?"
It's a little bit direct, so it's maybe not quite as polite, but if you say it with a
pleasant or polite tone of voice, it's normally fine. These next two
sentences aren't actually questions, but if you say them, it's implied that you would
like the person to repeat what they said. These are: "I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said."
And: "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that."
Both of these mean the same thing. "I didn't catch that" is just more colloquial.
If the person is speaking too quickly for you, the question you should
ask is: "Could you please speak more slowly?" Or: "Could you speak more slowly, please?"
If you want to modify it, you can also say: "Could you please speak a bit more slowly?"
If somebody uses a word or an expression that you don't understand,
you can say: "What does that mean?" Or: "What does X mean?"
For example: "What does spatula mean?" This is a spatula.
Be careful, because lots of people get this wrong.
You cannot say: "What means X?" Or: "What means spatula?"
You have to say: "What does spatula mean?"
Another useful question is: "What do you mean by X?"
We use this is when we understand a word or a phrase, but we still don't know exactly
what the person means. We use it especially if something has several
meanings or if something might mean different things to different people.
For example: "What do you mean by 'she's rich'? Does she own one house or 10?"
Or: "What do you mean by 'clean'?
Do you mean it's like a hospital or do you mean he cleans his house once a week?"
In French it's a bit like saying: "Qu'est-ce que tu veux dire par là?"
And in Spanish it's something like: "Qué quieres decir con eso?"
If the person you're speaking to understands your native language,
and you want to know the translation of a word or a phrase in English,
you can say: "How do you say X in English?"
Let's pretend you're a Spanish speaker. You could say: "How do you say 'caballo' in English?"
If you don't speak Spanish, "caballo" means "horse".
And be careful here as well, because you cannot say: "How is X in English?"
"How is 'caballo' in English?" No. But you can say: "What is 'caballo' in English?"
That's fine too.
Sometimes you might want to know how to spell something in English.
Then you could say: "How do you spell that?"
Or: "Could you spell that for me, please?" Or: "Could you please spell that?"
And if you're still confused, you can say: "Could you please write that down for me?"
You don't have to use the "down" here. You can just say: "Could you please write that for me?"
But it's more common to say: "Could you please write that down for me?"
I hope you found that useful. If you have any questions, please write them
in the comments section down below, and if you liked the video,
please give it a thumbs up. See you next time.