Tuesday, November 01, 2005

What are differences?

I found English sentences I didn't know. (There are many many sentences I don't know though.)

(1) "Do you happen to know ----- "
What is difference from "Do you know ----- "?

(2) "It's worth while to ----- "
What is difference from "It's worth to ----- "?

What are "happen to" and "while" for? Large difference or delicate difference?
Hmm... It's enough for speaking English to know only "Do you know" and "It's worth to", but I must master both phrases to listen to English.

If someone asks me "do you happen to know ----- ?", I would think "what's happened to me?" at first...

Halloween was finished. Halloween decorations disappeared from shops without trace and Christmas trees have been sold already instead of those. It's still 1st Nov.

2 comments:

Azxel said...

I think "Do you happen to know..." would be a polite way as opposed to using "Do you know...". Think of it like using the word "please"... i.e "Could you please pass me the salt?" and "Could you pass me the salt?". Both phrases are correct and yet one is more polite.

While I could be wrong but I do think that "Do you happen to know..." would be the correct phrase to use.

When someone asks you "Do you happen to know...". I believe that they're asking if you know what happened or not. The word "happen" here is referring to an occurance, or rather, "bechance". One can also use, "Would you by any chance know...?"

while, "It's worthwhile to..." is the correct phrase to use.

It's also proper to use only 3 dots "..." instead of 4 or 5. I learned this from years in Advertising.

sand said...

Thank you so much!! Oh, it's a polite way.
I need to be in English environment to distinguish the delicate difference of English...