This mini episode teaches you two interesting sentence starters: “As far as I know” and “For all I know.” (I discussed “For all I know” in episode 214, but I wanted to discuss it again here.)
Episode 223 of the Everybody ESL podcast is a mini episode that teaches you two interesting sentence starters: “As far as I know” and “For all I know.” (I discussed “For all I know” in episode 214, but I wanted to discuss it again here.) Send your questions about English and your suggestions for future episodes to EverybodyESL@gmail.com! (And let me know if you’d like to record the introduction to a future episode.)
Intro
“Hi, everyone. This is Mohadeseh from Iran. And you’re listening to Everybody ESL.”
Welcome to episode 223 of Everybody ESL, the podcast for everybody who wants to improve their English, practice their English, or just learn more English. My name is Ben, and I have a mini episode for you today, where I am going to teach you about one English topic. You can subscribe to the Everybody ESL podcast at Apple podcasts, on the Stitcher app, and wherever you find your podcasts. If you like Everybody ESL, leave it a good review so other people can find out about it too. And if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for me, please send an email to everybodyESL@gmail.com. Okay! Let’s get on with this mini episode.
The episode
Today, I want to teach you two interesting ways that you can begin a sentence. And these two ways are all about the things that we know or the things that we think we know, or the things that we don’t think we know.
These two phrases might look very similar, but they are actually very different.
The first one of these phrases is “As far as I know.” As far as I know. That’s as: a-s, far: f-a-r, as, I, know: k-n-o-w. As far as I know. We use this to introduce a sentence where we are going to be giving some information, where we are going to be saying something that we think is true. Maybe we are not positive that it’s true, but we think it’s true. We think we have this information. We think we are correct, but we do have to say that maybe we are wrong. We think we’re correct, but maybe we are not.
The second phrase that I want to teach you is “For all I know.” For all I know. That’s for: f-o-r, all: a-l-l, I, know: k-n-o-w. For all I know. The first one was “As far as I know,” and this one is “For all I know.”
When do we use “For all I know”? We use “For all I know” to introduce a statement that we are not very confident about. We are going to tell you something, but we think we are probably incorrect. Or we are saying that our information might not be complete or accurate.
Again, we use “As far as I know” to say, “I think I am correct, but maybe I’m not.” And we use “For all I know” to say, “I really do not think this is correct. I think I am probably wrong.”
Let me give you two examples that will show this difference.
Example number 1: “As far as I know, the capital of Spain is Madrid.” As far as I know, the capital of Spain is Madrid. What I’m saying when I say this is, “I think the capital of Spain is Madrid. I’m not certain, but I think this is true.”
Here is example number 2: “For all I know the capital of Spain is Barcelona.” For all I know, the capital of Spain is Barcelona.
The first thing I want to say is that is incorrect. The capital of Spain is not Barcelona.
And when I say something like “For all I know, the capital of Spain is Barcelona,” I’m saying, “You probably shouldn’t listen to me. I don’t know very much about Spain. I think I’m probably wrong, but here’s what I think.” Maybe it almost sounds like I’m just making a guess: “Maybe the capital is Barcelona. I really don’t know.”
There is one more thing I want to say about “For all I know.” When we use “For all I know,” we always stress the word I. For all I know. “For all I know, the capital of Spain is Barcelona.” For all I know. We always stress it on the I.
Those are two ways of introducing a sentence that both say something about our knowledge or our information, or how confident we are that we are correct.
Outro
We have reached the end of episode 223 of Everybody ESL. Remember: if you have any questions about English, or if you have comments or suggestions about the podcast, or if you would like to record an introduction that I can use at the beginning of future episodes—the same way Mohadeseh recorded the introduction you heard at the beginning of this episode—send an email to everybodyESL@gmail.com. I’ll be back soon with another episode, and until then, keep going, keep practicing, and keep learning. Goodbye! I’ll see you soon.