can you tell us vs pardon me

can you tell us

phrase
  • Begins a polite request; used on behalf of more than one speaker. 

pardon me

phrase
  • Polite expression to ask someone to repeat an utterance. 

  • Polite expression used to soften a contradiction. 

  • Sorry; said as an apology. 

How often have the words can you tell us and pardon me occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )