'Excuse me' or ' I'm soryy'?

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trencyfu

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----The concert is large enough to hold more than 3,000 people.
---- ________________ Did you say 3,000?

A. Excuse me B. I'm sorry C. What a surprise D. What a shame

Which one should I choose?
 

billmcd

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----The concert is large enough to hold more than 3,000 people.
---- ________________ Did you say 3,000?

A. Excuse me B. I'm sorry C. What a surprise D. What a shame

Which one should I choose?

Could be any depending on context. A. & B.: "I'm sorry / Excuse me, I didn't hear you." OR "I'm sorry / Excuse me, I wasn't listening." C. "That was a lot" OR "Even with the bad publicity" etc. etc. D. " I thought it would draw more than that." etc., etc.

 

alexdanny

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----The concert is large enough to hold more than 3,000 people.
---- ________________ Did you say 3,000?

A. Excuse me B. I'm sorry C. What a surprise D. What a shame

Which one should I choose?

I think it depends on the emotional stress the recipient is implying. In spoken English, on most occasions speakers will use the construction 'Excuse me/I'm sorry, did you say (...)' when replying to an unexpected outcome.


Not carved in stone though.
 

Rover_KE

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It depends where you live.

In the USA I hear 'I'm sorry'; in the UK 'Excuse me'.

Rover
 

emsr2d2

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It depends where you live.

In the USA I hear 'I'm sorry'; in the UK 'Excuse me'.

Rover

I would probably only use "Excuse me" to indicate that I wasn't sure that I'd heard correctly if I was fairly incredulous at what I thought I'd heard. It would probably be a quite high-pitched excitable "EXCUSE ME? (with questioning intonation) Did you say 3000?!"

If I was simply asking the person to confirm or repeat what they had said, I would use "I'm sorry [I didn't quite catch that]. Did you say 3000?"
 

trencyfu

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Thank you very much!
 

trencyfu

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Thanks a lot!
 

emsr2d2

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By the way "The concert is large enough to hold more than 3000 people" doesn't really make sense. Should it have said "The concert hall" or "The concert venue"? A concert doesn't hold people. It's held in front of people (the audience).
 
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