20 Natural English Phrases to Use When You’re Not Completely Sure

It doesn't matter what language you're speaking, native speakers know many different phrases to express how certain or uncertain they are about the information that they're about to share. In today's lesson, I'm going to teach you the phrases that you can use in your everyday conversations to feel more confident about sharing the information that you have. Now these phrases, they're going to be more than just I don't know or maybe. I don't want you to rely on only knowing those two ways to express yourself here. Today's phrases will help you sound more thoughtful and more confident in English. If you want to check out this lesson, you want the PDF, the quiz, and you want access to me as your teacher in a community full of English learners, make sure to visit englishwithkayla.com and you can join my monthly membership if it's right for you. Let's get started with this lesson right now. Let's start with a group of phrases that will help you express that you are fairly certain about the information you have, but you're sharing it carefully so that the person isn't like, you said this completely confidently. Let's start with this phrase. It's really useful. So the first phrase is, as far as I know, as far as I know, as far as I know, as far as I know, yes. Are we meeting at noon? As far as I know, yes. So this means the last email or the last text message you got with the plan said that you are meeting at noon. That's correct. And you're caveating or you're, you know, making Making sure the person knows that you are sharing the information that you know you You haven't gotten any updates that you are not meeting at noon. We often use this phrase, as far as I know, when we haven't received a Recent notification that something has changed. Perhaps the company that you work for has said that everyone will get bonuses at the end of the year. They will get a bonus in their pay. So you say, as far as I know, we're still supposed to get bonuses. So you're saying that your company hasn't changed its plan anytime recently. So your information that you know is that you're going to get a bonus. Nothing has changed. So this phrase, it doesn't mean that you don't know and that you don't have a lot of information. It just means that you don't know that the information has changed. It seems to be what you know is true. Another phrase that's very similar is the phrase, from what I understand. From what I understand. From what I understand, this is what I think is going to happen. A lot of times if I get an email and my husband gets the same email, we'll both read it and he'll ask me a question like, are they doing this? Kind of read the email and you just say from what I understand yes or from what I understand no that's not happening. So you're saying like I'm understanding the email like this. This is the information and this is how I'm interpreting or how I'm reading it. You can use this phrase too to kind of ask a question to make sure your understanding is correct. Let's say you're in a job interview with someone and you want to check and make sure that the job is a remote job. You can work from home. So you might say to the person that is interviewing you, from what I understand, the job is fully remote. And you can even add, is that correct? Or you can just state that and make sure that they say, yes, that's true. That is what you understand and it's true. And we talk about this phrase when we use it. We're talking about the present. You don't say, from what I understood. We usually say, from what I understand. This is what I know. This is my opinion after reading it right now. In a professional situation, you can use the phrase, to the best of my knowledge. To the best of my knowledge? No. To the best of my knowledge, this is what is happening. So you're saying, you know, from what I understand, it's like the last phrase, but it's a bit more professional. It's saying my knowledge of the procedures and my knowledge of everything that's going on in the company. I recently had to call a government office and ask if they have received a document that I sent in. And they said, to the best of my knowledge, yes, we have received it. And that's all that they could tell me. They couldn't tell me anything else about how it was processed. But they use this phrase because they were in a more professional situation and they're just saying what they can see to the best of their knowledge. That's what they see. So if you want to say that you might be wrong about something, you are just saying what you remember, you can use this next phrase. If I'm not mistaken. A lot of times I use this phrase when I'm giving directions to someone. I'll say, if I'm not mistaken, I think you can also take This road. This means it's just my memory. It's what I've done before in the past, but I'm not looking at a map right now and telling you the exact facts that I know. I'm just going off what I remember. If I'm not mistaken, I think that this road is a little bit faster is what I'll say as A lot of times if you want to gently correct someone because you remember the details differently, you could say, if I'm not mistaken, I think the meeting is at one o'clock, not two o'clock. And usually when you use this phrase, you're kind of prompting them to check what they have just said because you are remembering it different than what they just said. Another gentle, very softening phrase that you can use is you can say, unless I'm remembering wrong. Unless I'm wrong or sometimes I say unless I'm remembering incorrectly. This again is kind of saying like I think that this is correct or I think that this is what happened but I could be wrong because I'm just saying what I remember or what I saw. A lot of times when you're talking to someone and you don't want to be rude by it. You know, saying information incorrect or misremembering what they said. You could say, unless I'm wrong, did you used to live in Chicago? And they would say, yeah, like, I can't believe you remember that. Or, yeah, I did actually. So here you're kind of just gently introducing some information with not 100% certainty, but just saying what you remember. A phrase that I use pretty frequently is, I believe so. I believe so. I believe so. You will hear English speakers use this phrase all of the time. Again, it's going off the information that you have, but it might not be a 100% fact. A lot of times my husband will say, you know, is this person coming when we're going to a big family event? And I, you know, hadn't heard that they weren't coming, but I hadn't directly texted them and said, hey, are you coming today? I'll say, I believe so, but maybe they're busy. I believe that they were coming. Because you know, I haven't heard otherwise. So I'm fairly certain when I use this phrase that the person will be there. But again, like it's not like I'm talking to them on the phone saying, hey, are you coming right now? What time are you coming? So you can use this phrase, I believe so to replace a full positive statement. Like in this case, when my husband says, is your friend coming? I'll say, I believe so. I don't have to say I believe she is coming. I can just say I A lot of times in just everyday situations and professional situations, you have to make a guess and you have to make an educated guess. So, for instance, maybe you are telling someone, you know, their package was delivered to the wrong address. You could use this phrase, my best guess. My best guess. My best guess is the package was delivered to the wrong address. You don't have proof of this, but it just seems like in this situation, this might have happened. If you're in a customer service situation and someone's angry and you might have to just make a guess and try to reassure them that you can make the situation right. So my best guess is this happened, but we can help you. When you just don't know, but you can't give, you know, a perfect answer to something, you can use the phrase, if I had to guess, if I had to guess. If I had to guess. How old do you think she is? If I had to guess, I'd say she's about 30. This means you're not completely sure, but you're just having to guess here. Or maybe you'll say, how long do you think it's going to take? And the person says, you know, if I had to guess, I'd say two hours. It's like I'm not completely certain and I'm just throwing out a guess on the information that I have right now. Another way that we show that we're estimating or we're kind of giving our opinion is if you use the phrase, I'd say, I'd say, how many people were at the wedding last week? I'd say like 200. So again, you're giving a guess and it's an educated guess based off you being there and seeing all the people. So you can use this phrase when you're estimating something like a number, but you can also use this phrase if you're giving evaluation. Like for instance, if your mechanic says, I'd say you'd probably want to get new tires. It's more of their opinion. It's not like for sure you need to get new tires, but I'd say you probably would want to take care of it today. It's their opinion, it's their best guess, and it's also like an evaluation phrase. I'd say. When you want to say what's likely to happen or probably true, you can use the phrase chances are. Chances are. Let's go back to the situation. Your mechanic says, I'd say you want to get tires. They can say, chances are, if you don't get tires, you'll need them by next winter. So it's saying like, chances are this is going to happen. This is going to happen in the future. When you use this phrase, chances are, it means you're confident. Pretty confident in what you're saying. If you leave now, chances are you won't hit any traffic on the way home. So when I say this, I'm very confident that you're going to get home quickly and not be stuck in a big traffic jam. The chances are good, but you know, there's always a little bit of estimate that there could be an accident in this situation. The next phrase is really similar to chances are. Instead, we just say odds are. Odds are it's going to rain tomorrow. Odds are. This one might be a little bit more casual than chances are. Again, if you want to tell exactly what you think is going to happen, you're not completely sure, you can use this phrase, I wouldn't be surprised if... Wouldn't be surprised if there's... Odds are it's going to rain tomorrow. I wouldn't be surprised if they cancel the event. So this is just saying like you're not going to be surprised, you're actually predicting that this will happen. And I just used two of the phrases in the same sentence there, so... I would say these two phrases, chances are, odds are, are really commonly used. I wouldn't be surprised if. Chances are, it's going to rain tomorrow. I wouldn't be surprised if the event gets canceled. And let's say you haven't looked up the weather yet. You're just kind of saying it could rain, but I don't know if it's supposed to. You could say, for all I know, it's supposed to rain tomorrow. Hey, for all I know. For all I know. The event will get cancelled. So this is saying that you have no information that would lead you to this, but it's possible, it's a possibility, and you can see it happening, even if you don't have information that causes you to think it will. When you have information that you have seen or heard, and you want to kind of introduce, you know, a correction, or you want to ask about something, you can use this phrase. I'm under the impression that... I'm under the impression that let's say you go to a professional conference and it's lunchtime and you read in an email that lunch was supposed to be paid for or included, but you don't know who's paying for it or where to get it. You could ask, you know, someone working there, I'm under the impression that lunch was included. So you're under the impression because you read it in an email, but you're not really sure like how to go about it. So this phrase is really good in this situation. Maybe your boss says, you know, where is the project? The project's supposed to be done, but you had read in the email from them last week that they were extending the deadline. You could say, oh, I was under the impression that the deadline was extended. So you're telling your boss, you know, you're under this impression because you read an email, even though they're saying something differently now. So this phrase, it's not like I'm super confident about this, but you're saying, you know. Your understanding and you're saying your understanding might be incorrect because, you know, the situation has changed or whatever, but you're just trying to introduce your knowledge or your ideas using this phrase. English speakers all the time use the word seems. It seems like. It seems like. It seems like. So it's based on what you observe or what you are seeing. It seems like everybody is ready to go home. It seems like everybody's tired. So not everybody has said, you know, I'm super tired or I want to go home in this situation. But you're kind of seeing everyone. They are low energy. They're just kind of feeling relaxed. They're not getting a ton of work done. So you are saying what you are observing or you're seeing. And we're using this It seems like, it seems like. This is probably one of the most common phrases that English speakers use to kind of soften what they're saying or soften a conclusion especially when it's kind of negative here like you know everybody wants to go home everybody's tired instead of just saying you know everybody is sick of this this is boring we're tired we want to go home. Those can seem like complaints we say it seems like everybody's ready to end the meeting it seems like we want to go home so it's softening it's what you observe. After someone tells you about something or they kind of tell you how they feel, you can kind of use that information that they just gave you and you can summarize it using the phrase, it sounds like. It sounds like you had a busy day or it sounds like that was very frustrating. They didn't tell you it was frustrating, but you're kind of giving your opinion here by using this phrase of what you just heard. If you saw something it's visual evidence you can say it looks like it looks like it's cloudy outside instead of that you say it sounds like or it sounds like it's storming outside. You're actually hearing it here when you use this phrase. I use the phrase apparently apparently When a lot of people have told me something, but I haven't seen it or heard it for myself. The other day, my son got home and was telling me there was a bunch of bees at his school and that he thought there was a bee's nest in his classroom. And so I said, apparently there's a bee's nest in his classroom, or apparently there's a lot of bees. I didn't see it myself, but I'm just believing what my child, what my son told me. And like children are not always a hundred percent reliable. So that's why I use this phrase apparently, because I didn't see it myself When we use apparently, it does sound like you're a little bit skeptical. You don't fully believe what you're saying. Another way to introduce an opinion or a correction that you have to make, but admitting that you could be wrong, you're not 100% sure, is you can say, I could be wrong. But I could be wrong. I could be wrong. I could be wrong but I think we were supposed to take that turn. If I'm not completely sure about the directions or the way that we're supposed to go or I'm even looking at the map or the GPS and we just can't tell exactly what turn we're supposed to take you can say I could be wrong but I It shows you're not 100% confident but you're introducing a correction or an opinion that you think we were supposed to take that turn. have. And finally, when someone asks you a question but you actually cannot say something with 100% confidence, you want to leave a little bit of doubt, use the phrase, I can't say for certain. I can't say for certain, it was my... I can't say for certain, but I think we changed the policy last year, or I can't say for certain, but I think she is busy that day. You don't know your friend's plans, but you kind of know her schedule in general. You could say, I can't say for certain, but I think she's usually busy on Tuesdays. So it just shows you're not 100% confident, but you're giving what you think is the situation. Congratulations, because you just learned. 20 new phrases that you can use all of the time to express how certain you are in information, which I feel like is such an important part in everyday conversations. If you want to learn more with me, visit englishwithkayla.com. Or if you're in the mood to watch another English lesson right here, go ahead and click the video on screen. I can't wait to see you in the next video. Thanks again for watching. Goodbye.