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How many languages can you say Please and Thank You in? (startrek.website)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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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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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Can you expand on the Finnish? Is it engrained in the language somehow?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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"

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    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".

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