One of my friends asked me to help him and my response was:
How can I help you?
But he laughed and said you mean:
How can I be of service
What is the difference?
English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this communityOne of my friends asked me to help him and my response was:
How can I help you?
But he laughed and said you mean:
How can I be of service
What is the difference?
One possible explanation about his joke could relate to sales technique and the use of biased questions. If you were a sales person in a shop, you would be expected to walk up to customers and offer to help. If you say:
Can I help you?
This is not a biased question: the customer can answer yes or no. If, instead, you ask
How can I help you?
this is a biased question: you are assuming that you can help, and it's difficult for the customer to refuse. This question is simply a polite biased question: you could go to the next level by asking a very obsequious biased question:
How can I be of service?
When your friend asked you to help, your response was perfectly appropriate because you definitely know that your friend wants your help. It is, however, a stock phrase which sounds like a sales pitch, and your friend may have been alluding to the "sales pitch" angle by suggesting that you should go to the next level.
If somebody asked me to help them, I would reply slightly less formally and I would avoid potentially confusing stock phrases, by saying:
Sure. What would you like me to do?
I can't see why he laughed.
There are many possible ways to provide help.
As others have pointed out, there isn't really any difference in meaning between the two phrases; the only real difference is that "being of service" is slightly more formal.
Therefore I cannot tell you definitively why your friend found it funny (I don't see the joke) and "corrected" you. I can only offer the following suggestions: