Ok, Lemmy, let’s another play a game!
And I honestly think this one’s more important.
Post how many languages in which you can say Please and Thank You, including your native language. If you can, please provide which languages and how to phonetically say them so the rest of us can learn!
I spent a fair amount of bopping around Europe in the early Aughts and as a native English speaker, I found everyone appreciating my bad mangled attempts at politeness.
Zero. 🖕🏻
Do programming languages count? :)
Here’s Go:
package main import "fmt" func main() { fmt.Println("Please and Thank You") }Why is it that this got the most upvotes, compared to the more genuine comments in this thread? :)
But how do you do it in Rust?
Here’s Rust:
fn main() { println!("Please and Thank You"); }Here it is in Commodore 64 BASIC:
10 PRINT “PLEASE AND THANK YOU.” 20 GOTO 10
Please and thank you
Te rog si multumesc
Bitte und danke
I dont know how to explain how to say a word to someone if they dont speak romanian
In the order I learned them:
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🇷🇴 Romanian: Vă rog / Mulțumesc (native)
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🇨🇵 French: S’il-vous-plaît / Merci
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🇬🇧 English: Please / Thank you
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🇪🇦 Spanish: Por favor / Gracias
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🇯🇵 Japanese: Onegai / Arigato
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🇨🇳 Mandarin: Qing / Xiè xie
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🇮🇹 Italian: Per favore / Grazie
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🇩🇪 German: Bitte / Danke
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🇷🇺 Russian: Pozhalusta / Spasiba
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Estonian: Palun / Aitäh
English: Please / Thank you
English: Please : Thank you
French: Aujourd’hui : Merci
Spanish: Por Favor : Gracias
German: Regenbogen : Danke
Swedish: tillhör alla : tack
EDIT: This was just a small play at poetry as I wish I knew all of these languages but do not
In order of fluency (for languages spoken, although German was only studied and any fluency has rusted out):
Portuguese: Por Favor/Obrigado
English: Please/Thank you
Spanish: Por Favor/Gracias
Farsi: Lotfan/Merci (plus many more elaborate ways of thanking)
German: Bitte/Danke
For languages I don’t speak at all, but only know because of friends who are native speakers:
French: s’il vous plait/merci
Romanian: Va rog/multumesc
Italian: Per favore/Grazie
Oh I like the Romanian please. That sound fun to say.
I know some, I guess, hope I do not butcher them:
German(native): Bitte/ Danke (sehr) or Vielen Dank,
English: please/ thank you (very much),
Japanese: どうぞ or おねがいします or ください/ (どうも)ありがとう(ございます) (Which is douzo (when you offer someone something, I think, onegaishimasu/kudasai (if you want something or someone to do something, which is following the request.)/ (domo)arigatou(gozaimasu),
Norwegian: vær så snill / (tusen) takk,
(Which is like “Sei so gut/lieb”/ “Tausend Dank” in German.),Romanian: vă rog or te rog (formal/informal)/ mulțumesc ((foarte) mult) or mersi (mult) (ă is a short a, I guess and ț is like the ts from “its”, or a German z)
French: s’il vous plait (that one I had to look up on how to write)/ merci
Polish: proszę (bardzo)/ dzięki or dziękuję (bardzo) (Like proshe/ djenki/djenkuje)(ę is nasalized)
Portuguese: faz favor or por favor/ obrigado or obrigada (male/female) (o is spoken like an u) (I do not know much Portuguese (like French and Polish), in my book (European Portuguese faz favor and por favor are used, but I do not know the differences.)
For me: English, Irish, french, German, Indonesian, Malaysian (same as Indonesian), japanese I’ve thank you in Turkish, Thai,
For Irish Please is: le do thoil (é). Translates as; by your will (it). Pronounce : le duh hull ay.
For thank you: Go raibh (míle) maith agat. Translates as may (a thousand) good things be/fall upon you. Pronounce : guh rev mee-la moh a-gut
For pronunciation, I’m using Munster dialect. It can be quite different for other dialects.
Other languages seem to be covered by others, so I thought I’d add the Irish in more detail.
Define language… Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, English, French, German, BHS (Bosnian Croatian, Serbian), Esperanto, Czech, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish… i think that’s it.
Languages I’m fluent:
- Spanish (Por favor, Gracias)
- Portuguese (Por favor, Obrigado/a)
- English (Please, Thank you)
Languages I can mostly understand but I’m a disaster speaking:
- Italian (Per favore, Grazie)
- Catalan (Si us plau, Merci (Technically Gracies, but most people use Merci))
Languages I can speak small child like phrases and express some simple things (although I’m very rusty in both of them):
- Russian (пожалуйста (Pajalsta), спасибо (Spaciba))
- German (Bitte, Danke)
Languages I can say “I’m sorry, I don’t speak X, do you speak English?” (Which I think is more important than just please and thank you)
- French (Si vous plat, Merci)
- Dutch ( [don’t know this one], dank je)
- Finnish ( * , Kiitos)
Languages I can say Please and thank you (because I’ve seen enough TV in this language):
- Japanese (Onegai, Arigato)
* There’s no word for please in Finnish, which you’d think makes the language sound harsh, but I think it’s the other way around, it makes everyone be polite by default, when going into a coffee shop and saying “one coffee” is the equivalent to “hello, can I please have one coffee, thanks” it’s hard to be rude.
Can you expand on the Finnish? Is it engrained in the language somehow?
I don’t really speak Finnish, so probably someone can expand better, but AFAIK they don’t have a word for Please. When I was in Finland I went to a coffee place with a friend, and noticed he said “yksi kahvi” which literally means one coffee, when he got his coffee he said “Kiitos” (thanks), I noticed no one used any recurring word that could mean Please, so I asked my friend and he said something like “They’re all being polite, we just don’t have a word for please, one could say something like: I would like a coffee, Thanks. But that’s just overcomplicated”
Native here. I think this is pretty accurate. Politeness is usually tied to other phrasings or modes of speaking, and as an ESL speaker I just think “please” is just a word that gets sprinkled in. In everyday conversations like buying something, it’s kinda more polite to get the thing over with as fast as possible. If you just want a coffee, you don’t need more than “hey” and “thanks” to be nice, right?
That said, it’s definitely not impossible to be explicitly polite: “Ole hyvä”/“Olkaa hyvä” (“[You] (2p. sg./pl.) be kind”) is basically “please” as in “could you do…” or “here you go, have this” or “go ahead and do that” depending on context. “Ole kiltti” (“[You] (2p.sg.) be nice”) is “please” as in “would you be especially kind to do…” But as you can see, these are basically direct orders, it’s “be kind”, not “please be kind”.
So like impolite would be “give me a coffee”, polite is “would you give me a coffee?” instead of “coffee please”. Makes sense, thanks!
Mostly thanks because that’s the only word I learned when I’m visiting.
obrigado, obrigada - Portuguese Bitte/Danke - Deutsch dack - Dutch Gratzi - Italian Por favor/Gracias - Spanish Takk - norge Merci - French 不好意思。/ 謝謝 - Chinese ありがとう - Japanese Oi cunt / thank ye cunt
dack - Dutch
Dutch is alsjeblieft (informal), alstublieft (formal), thanks (informal), dankjewel (informal), or dankuwel (formal). The former probably means “as you desired” in old Dutch, the latter “thank you well”, and the formal/informal variants simply insert the right word for “you” (je or u). And then there’s thanks being commonly used. Or also bedankt, sounds kinda formal to me as well, not sure when you’d use that instead of dankuwel
Just “dank” (maybe you wrote that and autocorrupt kicked in?) is not really a thing we say, it just means “thank” which you’d also not say by itself in English (unless you’re Rocky)
Edit: writing “dank” in an English sentence feels like everyone will think our thank-yous are like dank memes. The pronunciation of the “a” there is as in Clark; the English pronunciation of dank would map to denk in Dutch and means think!
“Please” and “thank you”. English.
(Pleez ahnd thank yehw)
“Oes gwelwch chi’n dda” ac “diolch”. Welsh/Cymraeg.
(Oys gwel ook kheen thza ak deeolkh)
“Por favor” y “gracías”. Spanish/español.
(Pour fah vour ee gras ee AHS)
Welsh is amazing I never knew them but I love how “Welshman” they sound.
