How many languages can you say Please and Thank You in?
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.
Thank you in Maori is "kia ora" (key-ah or-ah, but mostly said more like k-your-ah). Literally translates to "be well", kia meaning be, ora meaning life/wellness.
Please in Maori is a bit less clear. There is the word "koa" (I don't know how to phonetically write it, but all the letters are pronounced the same as above), but that's a concept that came with pakeha (European settlers). Before that, it was more about the tone of the request.
Edit: actually I do know more, but English and Maori are the two main languages I know any of.
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.
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"
Yeah, Romanian is so weird to me as a native Portuguese speaker - there are so many cognates. I am good friends with a Romanian family and when they talk all sorts of words are completely understandable coming from Portuguese....
German, French, English, Japanese (seriously, I never realized how much language I took away from martial arts classes! And in my post about counting, a significant percent of other people did, too), Spanish, Esperanto. I think that's it - 6.
I can say "blindingly drunk" in Russian, which seems useful. Also, "trust, but verify," - thanks, Raegan. Two phrases, neither of which are "please or thank you," but matching the cardinality of your question so I should get a half-point.
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.
I’ve found that most people really appreciate even just the attempt at their own language. The fact that you’re trying goes a long way with most people.
I fully agree! Paraphrasing the Nelson Mandela quote that got me into college and grad school “if you speak to a man in a language he understands it goes to his head, but if you speak to a man in his language it goes to his heart.”
Idk I feel my partners English is received well by Americans but yes French and Parisians are something else
So, this is an odd one because I travel a lot and try to learn basic words in local languages, usually hello, please, thank you, sorry/excuse me, and numbers are my basic go to. For some reason, in a number of languages "please" isn't something you get by default. I've found this particularly in southeast Asia.
I can say please and thank you (and generally converse and read) in French and Spanish. In Spanish I find myself using "por favor" a lot. "You're welcome" takes different forms in Spanish depending where your are, and what's polite in one place can be confusing or even rude in another.
I can say hello, please, and thank you in German, Italian, and Greek. I mostly said hello and thank you in Greece and Italy, rarely please. I've never actually used German in situ, I just know it from pop culture I think.
I can say hello and thank you (and various other things) in Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Malay, Thai, Lao, Khmer, and Vietnamese. I might need to think hard for a minute or get a quick refresher so that I don't mix some of them up sometimes, especially when I'm moving from one country to the next... I don't think I ever learned please specifically in any of these, though I think it's kind of built into the other things you say in a lot of them (especially Thai).
So, please and thank you, 6 for sure. But if the goal is to talk about language basics for getting around as a visitor, I would say 13 :)
That fascinating. I wonder if it’s a cultural thing or a grammar thing? Most Asian countries have a stereotype of being polite so I’d take a guess at the grammar of Asian languages making it harder to put a mood changing word in a question maybe,
Yeah I definitely don't know enough to say. You can definitely translate please in translators for those languages, but for whatever reason I just haven't been seeing it in language basics. Once I spend more time there I'll learn more.
For Thai specifically, you say "ka" (if you're a woman) or "kraub"/"kaub"/"kaup" (if you're a man) at the end of everything you say. Whenever you finish a sentence you say it. I saw a woman relating a phone number, and she would say "ka" after every number. It's all about politeness.
Aujourd'hui means today. You're looking for: s'il vous/te plait.
In German, bitte is please (and part of you're welcome) but regenbogen means 🌈, so youre still spreading happiness.
I remember I once told a German person 'ich besuche dich diese wochenende.' I'll visit you this weekend. I meant to wish them a nice weekend. They were quite surprised as we met in a professional work setting, not social, lol.
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
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!
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.)
I am unsure how to best do the pronouncing, but en Español:
por favor (last part of favor is more pronounced)
gracias (first part is more pronounced)
In English:
please
thank you (pronounce more the part that makes sense for the situation)
I’m rusty in a bunch. My favourites are the Scandinavian languages just because how the people lit up whenever you tried. It was like “Bless your heart, you poor English speaker.” Like they were watching a puppy.
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