AEE 2400: I Have No Clue! How to Say You Don't Know in English
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This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2400. I have no clue how to say you don't know in English.

Welcome to the All Ears English podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection. With your American hosts, Lindsay

McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, coming to you from Colorado and New York City, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.

So many moments in life where we just don't know the answer. How can you say that you don't know and maybe even share a connection moment with someone else in English? Find out today.

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Hello, Michelle. Welcome to episode 2400 of All Ears English. It's incredible. 2400. Congratulations. Wow. Yeah, it's crazy when we get to one of those round numbers, right? It's amazing. And we're lucky that we get to do this every week. I love it. But Michelle, guess what I'm doing this weekend? What? I'm going hiking. Shocking. Oh my gosh. That is shocking. Are you really? Are you really?

Probably not. I think I'm going to just going to do some things around the city this weekend. But yeah, are you going hiking this weekend? I'm not. No, I mean, I guess you never know. But yeah, today we're going to talk about a very useful expression with the word guess, right? Because Lindsay said, guess what I'm doing this weekend, right? So we're going to get into that in just a second. But guys, we want to

to remind you, we have this amazing app. If you are not listening through the app, you're missing out, right, Lindsay? Yeah, I know many of our listeners are over there listening to the podcast for free in the app. So you can get the podcast for free, but then you can get more good stuff as a premium user. You can get real time transcripts right inside the app.

you can get bonus content you can tap on keywords that we've selected for you if you want to save them to your special list so definitely go over and check out the app allearsenglish.com all right good stuff perfect all right so we were using the word guess so this expression is your guess is as good as mine

- Lindsay, oh. - Yes, yes. Your guess is as good as mine. Michelle, when did you say this? Did you say this recently? - Recently, yeah, recently I said it and then I wrote it down. You know how I do. So Lindsay, do you say, I mean, this is such a useful expression and I think it's definitely good to devote an entire episode to it. Do you use this? - Yeah, for sure, I do. And I use it sometimes when,

I'm just confused. Something is, I just, I don't know. And I'm trying to indicate that you don't know. I don't know. We're both a little clueless. And I find myself in these situations often. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. It's like, you don't know, you'd be guessing and the other person doesn't know any more than you. Exactly. Exactly. And we're kind of trying to emphasize that fact too, right? We're both a little clueless. Maybe something is just confusing, right? So we'll get some context going on for our listeners here. All right. Here we go. All right. All right. Here we go. So here's a role play.

When does the sale end? Your guess is as good as mine. We can call and ask. So what you're saying here, you could be saying a little more than just the fact that you don't know when the sale ends. You might be saying the marketing is not good because it's not clear when the sale is over. Right? Right. We could be looking at a website and we're trying to figure it out and there's really not much information.

And it can also be used in kind of a funny way of like, well, how would I know? Right. It's like, why would I know more than you? Right. Yeah. You know, this makes me think of trying to navigate pretty much any government website. Right.

Have you ever tried to navigate a government website? It's real difficult. It's real difficult. Yes, exactly. There's the whole page. Your guess is as good as mine. Right, right, right. Here's another mini role play. All right. How many tablecloths do we need for the event? Your guess is as good as mine. Well, what's the count so far? All right. So this might indicate something else.

Right. And this might indicate that we don't have the event under control. Maybe we don't know how many people are coming. Right. Things are a little chaotic. Right. Right. To me, this expression, it can be kind of humble sounding. It's showing that you don't think you know it all, but you also don't want to overuse it because it could sound like you're lacking confidence if you overuse it or maybe that you're always just trying to get answers from others. Right.

For sure. For sure. I mean, if it's in an area that you should know the thing, you probably don't want to say that, right? If you are the party organizer for this event with tablecloths, you probably don't want to say your guess is as good as mine. You should probably, even if you don't know, you should try to, I don't know, say it differently. So you don't show lack of competence, right? Yes. Yes, exactly. You want to, it can be, I think it's totally fine to use it when you don't

know for sure that both of you shouldn't know. You're trying to figure out something together. But if it's something where you have some sort of authority, it's not really a great idea. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Absolutely. Love it.

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Okay, Michelle, we are back. So what are some other ways? So we've said your guess is as good as mine. What are other ways that we might convey this feeling of saying that we just don't know the answer to something? Yeah, this one is very casual. You could just say beats me. Yeah, I love this one. It's very weird. I always wondered. Yeah, it's strange. So what would we say, Michelle, for example, where's the restaurant?

Beats me. I'll look it up. Yeah. So do you use this one in your daily life, Michelle? Do you find yourself using this one a lot? Maybe not as much. Maybe I used to use it more, but it's very common. What about you? Do you use this? Yeah.

Yeah, it's common. I don't really, I think it might be a little getting a little dated or something. I kind of feel like I've heard it more in movies from the eighties and the nineties. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But this one's not dated for sure. This one is not dated. Uh, this one is no clue. So it's the same thing as saying, well, I just gave a, I'm going to about to give another expression away, but we'll get to that. All right. So no clue. It's, I don't know. Um, here we go. What should we get for Ellen's birthday?

No clue. Let's look online together. Now, I remember first hearing this when I was a kid. So it has been used easily since the 80s, if not before that. But I remember thinking that sounds so cool, right? I don't know why I thought that, but I thought it sounds so cool. It is kind of fun.

It does have a kind of fun sound to it. Clue, clue. No clue. I have no clue. But it's lasted. Some phrases last through the decades and some phrases become dated. And this is one that's still carrying on. So permission to use, right? Love it. I'm going to actually take out this next one because I don't like it. But we're going to do one more. It's...

I have no idea. This is just very direct. Very standard. Very standard, right? Why hasn't she called us? I have no idea. And you know, the cool thing about this one, it's very standard. It's everywhere. This would be my go-to, but you can put a lot of energy behind this in your voice, in your tone of voice. Right, Michelle? Yeah, I would say this is the most neutral, the most... I would say this is

say this is the most common, actually. I have no idea. Yeah. I mean, there are so many moments in life where we just don't know what's going on. We don't know the answer, right? So we need different ways to say this. Right, right, right. And your guess is as good as mine. I think it has the most

kind of community feel to it, right? The other ones are more, you know, just isolated individual. I don't know, right? Beats me. No clue. I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine kind of brings the other person into it as well. So yes. Yes. I love that. Your guess is as good as mine. Let's do a role play. Shall we, Michelle?

Let's do it. All right. So, here we are friends working together on a project. Okay, here we go. Okay, so which graph should we use? Beats me. The third one? Yeah, that's probably good. How long did she say we have to complete this again? No clue. A week maybe? I think so. Why only a week? This is a huge project. Your guess is as good as mine. Seems unfair.

I know. Okay, nice. So we use a few of these here, right? So you asked, okay, so which graph should we use? And what did I say, Michelle? You said beats me the third one. So you're like, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Right. And then you said, how long did she say we have to complete this? And you and I said, what?

You said, um, no clue a week. Yeah, no clue. Well, clearly we're both, we're both very confused about what we're doing here. Right. Very confused. We should talk to somebody about this. Maybe we're, you know, for example, someone's gone on vacation and we're taking over their job, taking over their work or something. Right. It feels like,

we're a little out of our wheelhouse here, right? Yes, exactly. And then so we realize it's just a week and you say, why only a week? This is a huge project. And then what did you say? What did I say? Your guess is as good as mine. And also it sounds like within our organization, there's not very good communication between the employees and the management level in terms of why deadlines are set in a certain way. So that's not good. No, no. Hopefully this situation gets fixed.

So yeah, for sure. Michelle, what's another episode our listeners could check out?

All right, check out episode 2387. That was eight different ways to use some in English. I love it. And I think for a takeaway, there are a lot of moments in life where we're just clueless, like we're just confused. We just don't have the answer. And it's good to be able to kind of commiserate with someone and share that being lost or being confused or share that you don't know and maybe they know.

we need this. At least I find there's a lot of times when I don't know the answer. I don't know about you, Michelle. I know all the answers. You have all the answers. No, I don't know any. No, I know, you know, especially when it's in a situation that I am not knowledgeable about at all. Yeah. You know, or sometimes just that intuition. Sometimes it's just that like, it might not be about a specific field or topic, but just kind of a life

situation or oh my gosh yes as you get into your 30s and 40s there are all these life things that come up like when I had to deal with my when my aunt passed away and we're dealing with all the things that happen when a family member passes away I feel like for the last two years I've just been constantly saying beats me beats me I don't know how to do this how do I call this government agency deal with this thing do that file for this

there's no rule book for life, right? No one hands you a book and says, here's what to do when a family member passes away. Here's what to do when you want to do this. No, half the time we're just figuring things out, right? So we are going to need this a lot. This is a useful skill for our listeners.

- Right? - Yeah, exactly. And I also think that it shows, I don't know, a degree of humility to be okay. You don't wanna be that know-it-all, pretending that you know things that you don't. So sometimes it's just, just be honest, you don't know. It's okay. - Right. And it's a good perspective because I feel like they say that the more you know, like the smarter you know, the more you realize you don't know anything because you see how much more there is to learn and to know.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. When you don't know much, you think you know everything kind of because you don't know what else there is out there. You don't have a full perspective of what, how, I don't know, huge the universe is and how much there is to learn. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, super interesting. Getting deep. Yeah. Getting deep as always. All right, Michelle, good stuff guys. Hit the follow button. If you love our style of connection, not perfection and a focus on showing you how to connect in every moment and why it matters.

All right. Good stuff. All right, well, thanks for chatting about this with me today and guys, we'll see you in the next one. All right. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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