Mastodawn

Request to speakers of languages other than English, French and German

Request to speakers of languages other than English, French and German - lemy.lol

Hi thanks for looking at my query. I recently as a joke changed some writing on the board of a friends EAL (English as an Additional Language) classroom from English to German. She liked the idea, but using Google Translate resulted in an overly formal phrasing that made it seem more a demand than a suggestion or polite request. So my ask, if you speak (or I guess write) another language I would love to request you take a moment to translate “Please stack chairs at the end of the day” into whichever language you can help me with, it should be a polite request though. I’m really not sure what the composition of her class is but she is a fan of languages as a whole so even if it’s not a language that is represented in her class I am sure it will be a bit of fun and a talking point to figure it out. If you have the time and the skills to help I really appreciate it, otherwise I appreciate you taking the time to read this post. Have a fantastic day.

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oni ᓚᘏᗢ 5d ago

Spanish: “Por favor, apila las sillas al final del día.” It can be more polite if you add and “Gracias” at the end to give thanks before hand: “Por favor, apilas las sillas al final del día. Gracias.”

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shads 5d ago

Gracias.

Do you mind if I ask, what makes “apile” more polite than “apila”?

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Nightsound 5d ago

Native here.

“Apila” is refering to the listener as “tú” (a.k.a. “you”).

“Apile” is refering to the listener as “usted” (basically a more formal version of “you”).

In Spanish, despite both “tú” and “usted” refering to the 2nd person singular, different conjugations are used in each of them. “Tú” uses the standard 2nd person conjugation, while “Usted” picks the 3rd person’s one instead for whatever reason.

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shads 5d ago

Ok, sorry to come across as ignorant, but to pick a random example would this be the difference between “Excuse me” and Excuse me sir/ma’am?" The content remains the same but it’s usage would fall more into a formal way of speaking?

If you as an adult were addressing a class of teenagers but were only making a request, not a demand would either be more appropriate?

Thanks for the insight I really appreciate it.

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floquant

Italian has a similar thing, where it uses the (often implied) “her” pronoun conjugation as a formal structure, regardless of the person’s gender. From what the other Spanish commenters have said I would say it differs from it in that it conveys respect more than kindness, so it would sound weird in your context - but it might also be because I would translate the “command” version in the 2nd person plural and this only applies to the singular.

It used to be used with your parents not that long ago, that is almost completely gone now but it is still very common when talking to your teacher, businesses, letters, officers, old people, etc. It is also the default between strangers, but that has been slowly changing since the 2000s

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shads 5d ago

I’m super grateful for the explanation, does it make sense that I lack an adequate frame of reference for this? I did Latin many years ago, poorly. Since then it’s been primarily English with a touch of guidebook Japanese phrases. I just don’t have the mental agility to make the connections. But I am curious and when I am no longer working shift work I might delve into some language learning to improve the neural elasticity.

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floquant 5d ago

It does, it’s a very weird thing if you’re not used to it, you’re not dumb or anything. I recognize it’s a completely alien concept, there is no analogue in English, and it stacks on top of the singular and plural "you"s being different and having gendered words making it extra difficult to fully conjugate a sentence for speakers of languages that lack those features. But 90% of the time the meaning gets across anyway and we don’t care :) (unless you’re French /j)