I enjoyed this article, which is interesting throughout. Excerpt:
English-speakers are keen to say please politely in other languages,
even if those languages do not express politeness by constantly saying
please. So English tourists say ‘por favor’ to waiters and barmen in a
way that sounds too insistent to a Spaniard. It is as if someone were
to say: ‘A glass of wine, if you please, my good man.’ If you want the
butter passed in Spanish, you say, ‘Pass the butter.’ To add por favor
can smack of impatience.
Isn’t “you’re welcome” the traditional appropriate response to “thank you”? I find it odd that this writer didn’t mention that at all.
Thank You, I was thinking the exact same thing!
I’m a native Spanish speaker and I never thought of “por favor” as meaning “apurate”. Although if you tell you wife or girlfriend “Can we have sex… please?” It does sound like you are begging.
That’s actually wrong. It’s true that in Spanish using “please” as often as Americans do would sound strange — not bad, just unusual. But there are other ways to express politeness. Just saying “Pass the butter” would sound rude in any Spanish-speaking country. You would say something like “Could you pass me the butter?” or you would even change from informal (Pasame la mantequilla) to the formal as a way to express politeness (“Me pasa la mantequilla?). And the question-like tone of voice also indicates politeness. In other words, “please” is just replaced with other words, tone of voice, etc. Plus in this particular example, please fits well. The difference is that Americans tend to use more often “please” and “excuse” than in Spanish.
saying
youre welcome
is much more used by Americans than by the Englısh
scuse lack of punctuation but am using a keyboard in dalaman and cant find any
maybe Turks dont use punctuation
saying
youre welcome
is much more used by Americans than by the Englısh
scuse lack of punctuation but am using a keyboard in dalaman and cant find any
maybe Turks dont use punctuation
The same rule also applies in Danish and the other Scandinavian languages. Adding “hvis De ville være sÃ¥ venlig…” will all to easily sound like a deliberate insult.
Most of the time, it’s in the tone of the voice.
Forgetting the “Bitte sehr” in Germany, on the other hand…
We see this a lot with people learning Russian and Arabic, both languages in which you simply don’t say please all that often. Instead of sounding impatient, though, you sound kind of pitiful.
Something I’ve noticed – in Arabic, saying simply “thank you,” in response to an offer, is understood to mean “no, thank you.” Native English speakers in particular have trouble getting used to this, and always add “no” to their thank yous, which has the effect of making them sound emphatic to the point of rudeness.
While on a grant in the former Yugoslavia in the late 80′s, I tried to speak politely in Serbo-croatian (actually, Croatian).
One of my friends there said that I spoke Croatian like the demanding son of a Communist Party official.
Another said I spoke Croatian like Kunta Kinte.
Alanna,
But if you are an American in an Arab country and you are being too
persistently hounded by a would-be merchant trying to sell you something,
you may wish to say “la shukran” to make it very clear that they should
shut up, go away, and leave you alone.
This business of titles in Germany is a bit like in other countries.
There are always the pompous and insecure who demand to be addressed
by their full titles, and in German academia for those who bear them,
the full “Herr Dr. Dr. Prof…” is the way to go, and if one is addressing
a full-blown German professor with all those titles whom one does not
know very well, I strongly advise that you use the full list of those
honorifics, although you can usually leave off their Habilitation.
Well, poor Dot’s just wrong, isn’t she? “No problem” is an Americanism, it’s not an attempt by foreigners to fill a “zero realization.” In fact if a barista at an American Starbucks didn’t say “no problem” or at least a “you got it!” to my request for a coffee I would think he/she was being kind of rude. The fact that Brits think no response is required in that situation goes a long way towards explaining why Americans think British people in service jobs are cold and rude.
Alanna – why do you think Russians don’t use please often? They do, it just doesn’t translate that easily. A Russian will often use a “budte dobryi” or “budte liubezni” where an American would incorrectly use “pozhaluista.”
This sounds like a big bag of nonsense. First, the response in the Starbucks scenario conveys something very different from “thank you”: Customer: “Can I have a latte?” — Barista: “Thank you” doesn’t make sense. Second, of course there are are English equivalents to “de nada” that are part of everyday vernacular: “sure” and “you’re welcome” come to mind. Third, none of the non-English equivalents translates as “no problem”: “de nada” means “for nothing”, “bitte” und “prego” mean “please”. “No problemo” is of course only mock Spanish and originates in the U.S.
I think “Por favor” used by U.S. customers go long ways in Spanish speaking countries because of the usage of “Por favor” is a sign of respect and cordiality. Unrelated to this subject but more annoying to Spanish speaking people is the usage of “I am an American” in a Latinoamerican countries as if the Latinoamericans were not Americans.
In Portugal we say “por favor” as well, and it only sounds impatient if you put a particular tone to it. Gestures help too. I think it’s just as in english. Not saying “por favor” is impolite.
I’m Spanish and the author is absolutely right, although the effect may be softened if you use “por favor” at the beginning of an interrogative sentence: por favor, ¿me pasas el agua? (please, can you pass me the water?) is accepted, although the best word in that situation would be “perdón” or “perdona”, which is translated as “I’m sorry” (again, an expression you wouldn’t use in English).
Soooo complicated!
But, if one is likely to err one way or the other, it is generally safer to err on the side of being “too polite” than to being impolite, which is something Americans abroad are frequently accused of, often with all too good reason.
Por favor is a matter of courtessy here in Latinamerica. Only people with class prejudice wont say por favor to a waitress.Any other reaction will be triggered by antiamericanism( they can see you as condescending) Who wrote the article has no idea about he/she is talking about.
Im latinamerican
Vanya, fair point. I was thinking of the over-use of pozhaluista.
Barkley – even a persistent vendor knows that shukran means no thanks. Though if one wants to be deliberately rude to an annoying vendor, I have no objection. Saying la, shukran, to a waiter who just wants to give you more water or a friend who’s refilling your tea, you must admit is rude.
From personal experience I have found that the “stranger” you are, the more forgiving the “natives” are of language inadequacies.
For example, in Lisbon, I, as a USA dweeb , could get away with using my crappy Español to order items in a bar or restaurant. A Spaniard, on the other hand, would have been told to get lost. The Portuguese seemed to say to themselves: I forgive the idiot/ignorant Americano because he thinks our language and Español are the same. A Spaniard would just be perceived as arrogant.
Por favor.
Please forgive my bad command of the language.
De nada.
Can’t comment on usages in Spanish, a language I don’t know, but I can tell you for a fact that when I was growing up in Belgium, I got reminded by my Belgian aunt to add “s’il vous plait” (please) to any request where I omitted it.
I only speak a bit of Italian but there’s plenty of “per favore” being thrown around when I’m asking for stuff in Italy (as well as lots of “prego, prego”).
That may be true, especially in Argentina and Chile. I would say more to Argentina, since their rudeness is very known in South America.
I went to Medellin twice this year and Mexico City a couple of times. As I got better in Spanish, my friends would start to correct me. Particularly when I forgot the “por favor”, “la” and “el”
This is not true (at least not in Latin America). Spanish speakers do say “por favor” a lot and it is expected and polite. Saying “Pass the butter” without a “por favor” IS rude! I would say: “Me pasa la mantequilla, por favor.”
It is not the same on every region where Spanish is spoken, in Mexico, Cuba and Costa Rica it is as common to use polite terms like “Por favor” and “Gracias” even more often than the average American speaker does. At any rate, in my opinion, it is always better to be a little ‘over-polite’ than to be rude.
Also read the reply made by Joen.
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