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.
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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 (English)
- kiitos (Finnish)
- chōdai / kudasai (Japanese)
- s’il vous plaît (French)
- por favor (Spanish)
- bitte (German)
Thank you (English)
- kiitos (Finnish)
- arigatō (gozaimas) / dōmo (Japanese)
- gracias (Spanish)
- merci (French)
- grazie (Italian)
- kamsahamnida (Korean)
- xiexie (Chinese)
- tänan (Estonian)
- danke (German)
- spasiba (Russian)
- tack (Svedish)
I love the fact that Finnish doesn’t have a way of saying please, so you just thank the person instead. The first time I was in Finland I learned to say “excuse me, I don’t speak Finnish, do you speak English?”, and because that was the only thing I learned I wanted to learn to pronounce it correctly, so I took the time and effort to learn how to pronounce it. The problem when I do this, is that most people don’t learn basic niceties, and even the ones that do tent to mangle pronunciation, so native people think I’m kidding because it sounds like some native saying they don’t speak the language. Also because the majority of interactions with people are simple “hello”, “thanks”, “bye” I like to pick up on those by listening to people, but not by studying it or anything.
All of that setup for this stupid story: One day I go to a supermarket and the lady tells me “Moi” (hi) and with the same cheerful tone of voice I’ve seen people use I replied with “Moi Moi” (bye bye). I had seen people use both Moi and Moi Moi, but hadn’t noticed that one was hi and the other was bye, so I was accidentally cheerfully rude, and I still feel bad about it. If you’re out there, I’m so sorry supermarket lady in Helsinki, I’m just a dumb tourist trying to be nice.
I’m Finnish and I’ve had so many similar “awkward” situations. I often use “tänks” (or thanks) and a few time the cashier thought I’m speaking English :D
Estonian: Palun / Aitäh
English: Please / Thank you
Please + thank you
Sil vous plait et Merci
Bitte + Danke
Por favor + Gracias
Shukran thanks in Arabic but I don’t know how to say please.
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
Thanks Romanian sounds quite challenging
Speaking romanian is the easiest part of the language. I have heard from people trying to learn the language that the grammar is hard
please two. thank you five.
- Merican. Gods language and the best language. You know I speak better Merican that anyone ever did. The best. Everyone says it. One time I was talking to Elon. I call him fuck boy the cum dumpster. No one treats me like he does. But, he was telling me you speak the best Merican. No one can talk as good as you do. Everyone says it. Maybe I should write a book about how good my English is. It would be the most huge book ever.
/s
You speak such good Merican that I’m going to trust you with our nuclear codes
That orange man has never said Please in his entire lifetime
German Bitte, Danke
English U KNOW
French S’il vous plâit, merci
Spanish Por favor, graçias
Italian Per favore, grazie
Czech Prossim, djekuju
…6 ig :D
“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.
Real languages only, please!
/s
thought i missed the klingon…
went back…
ohhhhhhhhh…
English
German
Spanish
Arabic
Korean
In the order I learned them:
-
🇷🇴 Romanian: Vă rog / Mulțumesc (native)
-
🇨🇵 French: S’il-vous-plaît / Merci
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🇬🇧 English: Please / Thank you
-
🇪🇦 Spanish: Por favor / Gracias
-
🇯🇵 Japanese: Onegai / Arigato
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🇨🇳 Mandarin: Qing / Xiè xie
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🇮🇹 Italian: Per favore / Grazie
-
🇩🇪 German: Bitte / Danke
-
🇷🇺 Russian: Pozhalusta / Spasiba
Thanks I knew spasiba but Pozhalusta I just learned.
-
Zero
Define language… Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, English, French, German, BHS (Bosnian Croatian, Serbian), Esperanto, Czech, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish… i think that’s it.
Pretty cool that you can say “please” in Danish since the word doesn’t exist in the language.
Vær så venlig?
But what about cobol and C++? /s
Please and thank you
S’il vous plait et merci
And in ASL but that dont translate to text too well.
I just looked up please and thank you in ASL and now I know. Thank you.