If during conversation, I face problem in understanding what the other speaker is saying, I may come with following polite statements:
"Sorry...?"
"Sorry, could not get you..."
"Pardon me..."
"Come again please..."
But my inability to understand can be due to two reasons. 1) "I could not hear what you said" and 2) "I could not understand what you said."
But as far as I know, the aforementioned statements can't help differentiating between the situations. So my question is Is there any polite expression out there which can explicitly tell for what reason I could not understand you?
If such expression/phrase exists, the speaker can understand the reason and take necessary step accordingly i.e. either elevate his voice or rephrase what he is saying.
Answer
The aforementioned statements exactly differentiate the situations.
If you can't hear something, that means the sound waves were not entering your ear canal at sufficient amplitudes for you to translate into speech patterns.
IF you couldn't understand something it's because your brain could not make sense of the sounds it received.
It is true that sometimes people say they couldn't understand something because they couldn't hear it, but if you can help it, you should avoid that and only use understand when you mean understand and use hear when you mean hear.
As far as politeness goes, the usual response is to add extra words to make it clear what you are asking for.
"I'm sorry but I couldn't hear you, would you please repeat that?"
"I'm sorry but I'm unfamiliar with hermeticity would you please explain that?"
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