Photo credit: dailymail.co.uk
Today I realised that I never wrote about one single English phrase that I find to be the most useful in everyday life. A life-saver of a phrase, even! Not to brag, but I think I somehow got it right on my first trip to the UK and later on I heard it on so many occasions that it didn’t seem special any more.
So, imagine you walk into a stationary shop and you’re looking for… I don’t know, a pair of scissors. You’ve had a look around, but scissors are nowhere to be seen. You pluck up your courage and approach a shop assistant. What would you say?
Saying ‘Hi, I’m looking for a pair of scissors’ is perfectly fine, but if you want to sound a bit less direct, here’s where the life-saver phrase comes in: ‘I was wondering: do you have any scissors?’ Or if you wandered into a shoe shop and there was a pair of shoes to your liking you could say ‘Hi! I was just wondering: do you have them in size 6?’ (Or: ‘I was wondering if you have them in size 6′). More on sentence structures with this phrase can be found on this Wordreference forum thread.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of shoes, here’s my favourite bit of stand-up comedy exploring the uneasy relationship between women and shoes.
Confessions of the Linguistic Spy 