Quote:
Originally posted by John Henry
Just one more example before I bore you all rigid. My old Latin teacher used to tell us off if we said 'pardon' and would even prefer us to say 'what?'. This was because 'pardon' is just an abbreviation of 'I beg your pardon', which is in itself an abbreviation of 'I beg your pardon, but I didn't quite hear what you said. Would you mind repeating it, please?' and as such is completely meaningless on its own.
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Well, with all due respect to your Latin teacher, but that's just nonesense. By the same reasoning, "what" is just short for "What did you say?"
What's the difference? They're both reductions of a longer sentence. And saying "What?"
IS considered less polite.
Mr Mephisto