7d ago

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.

83 comments

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.

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