usage - "Give a hand" vs "Help"

Currently, I'm working in an international company with many non-native speakers (so am I) but with pretty good level of English, I suppose.

I have noticed that my colleagues usually use phrase "give a hand" when asking for help or even talking about it and seems to be avoiding the strong word "help".

It looks a bit confusing to me especially after I made people laugh when I said "I will help you" in one of our conversations, don't remember exact context though...

So could you please describe the difference between them? And is there something wrong or hidden meaning with help-based phrase?

Answer

In the following extract, the first & last items are from American sources, and the middle one is from a British source.

The first two items support the fact that to give somebody a hand is used to mean "to help someone". The third item confirms that (especially in US usage), that may also be expressed as "to lend somebody a hand"; although less common, that usage is certainly not unknown — and would certainly be understood — in the UK.

Conversely, if one were asking for help, one might say "Would you please give me a hand with this?". The expression would certainly be "give me a hand", but the "me" might be partially 'swallowed' and not heard clearly.

If offering help, I might say "Do you want a hand with that?". It's easy to see that a non-native speaker may get confused between "give me a hand" and "Do you want a hand?".

(As an aside, the usage of give a big hand to someone (note the word "big" in the middle) to mean "give a round of applause" is also common in the UK.)

Finally, although the expression "I will help you" may be slightly non-idiomatic, I cannot think that by itself it should be so strange as to make people laugh; but it's possible that it might sound funny in the context of something said previously.