I love this forum as it allows me to ask questions that help me understand things. Things I have known, used but not thought about. This happened to day and I thought “let’s ask the audience!”
Is saying
“I beg to differ”, or “I’d like to beg to differ” the same as “Shall we agree to disagree?”
Also, should I just “Beg to differ” or ask to beg to differ i.e. is “I’d like to beg to differ” asking if you can differ and then can you refuse to allow the beg to differ?
Rather convoluted in the end. I await to be enlightened on the quirks of the English language. Is this even an English language thing or do other languages have the same/similar phrases?
Have I opened up a can of worms?
And if I have, who even canned the worms?
The former allows the debate to continue and the latter allows an off-ramp to the debate. They are just polite ways to say, bollocks.
As for sentence structure, I beg to differ uses beg as the verb and I’d like to beg to differ uses beg to differ as a phrasal verb. Both are satisfactory usage.
As for the can of worms and who canned them, a canny lark did for later and if opened it will have nothing to eat by the time the owl wakes up.
When I used the phrase in a post yesterday, I begged to differ because I’d had a completely opposite experience with my sleep issue. I wasn’t saying the other poster was wrong, because they weren’t. It’s just that my experience was the opposite, so I begged to differ. I’d used that phrase because it just popped into my to my mind at the time.
Differ….different….different experience/opinion. But it doesn’t necessarily mean you think the other person wrong.
I tend to use agree to disagree a lot which for me means something like I take your point but I have a different view. It usually stops a big old debate occuring.
I am thinking back to when I have found myself using this in recent times and I have to say it about right and wrong and so we can’t both be right and one of us therefore has to be wrong. With neither willing to accept they are wrong we have a stalemate and without mediation, it can only be out on hold as an unresolved dispute or disagreement.
Doctors are telling me my Mum won’t walk or she is too frail (as per frailty index) and I am saying Mum will walk and she isn’t frail and since neither side willing to accept the other’s view, it comes down to “agree to disagree”. The issue remains unresolved with both sides sticking to their guns. Doctors refuse to treat/help Mum and I keep trying my best to help her to do what the doctors say she can’t or won’t do.
Conclusion:
Agree to disagree means we both accept there is a difference of opinion and each is entitled to their opinion and the discussion/argument/debate comes to a close. Agree to disagree, end of story.
I beg to differ …
This now seems to be when we wish to offer a different opinion to the one on the table. Hence I beg to differ and then a different opinion is put forward. At this stage we are starting the debate/discussion/argument and we start talking until we reach agreement, or we find we can’t agree and so we would then close out by “agreeing to disagree”.
Conclusion:
I beg to differ is used to offer a different opinion to further develop the discussion.
This is what I take from this, whether I am right or wrong I have no idea but it’s there for you digest and decide what you think.
My analysis of your scenario is that Bernard cannot start by saying “I agree to disagree”.
However he can respond to Charlie saying “Let’s agree to disagree”, or “Shall we agree to disagree?”.
P.S.
But, if you’re saying he can (Bernard) then I guess we might have to agree to disagree?
