I know that in German if someone says “danke”, you reply with “bitte”. Are there any other languages that say “please” to reply to “thank you”, or is it a specifically German thing?
To mine too. Waiters in London have started saying “you’re welcome”, but that is because they learnt their English by watching American movies. Well brought-up English children know you should never respond to “thank you”.Sounds very strange to my French ears (and I have the feeling it is invading the restaurant industry in France).
I was surprised to hear that in Belgium, it can go like this:
"Merci"
"S'il vous plaît"
which literally translates as:
"Thank you"
"Please"
Sounds very strange to my French ears (and I have the feeling it is invading the restaurant industry in France.
Usually, it would be:
"de rien" (literally: "of nothing") or "Je vous en prie" (hmm, such a set phrase I can't really translate it literally :-/)
Waiters in America have started saying "no problem" instead of "you're welcome". According to the "how-to-behave" rules this is said to be rather impolite. But I think not saying anything when someone else says "thank you" is considered very coarse manners. It is highly interesting to learn that this is handled so differently in England. What is the person who has been thanked supposed to do (in England)? Just ignoring the "thank you"?To mine too. Waiters in London have started saying “you’re welcome”, but that is because they learnt their English by watching American movies. Well brought-up English children know you should never respond to “thank you”.
To me "je vous en prie" is more polite than "de rien" by the way but what I mean is that I can't give a literal translation of "je vous en prie" ("I pray you of it"?!!Isn't "Je vous en prie" just the same?!
That's most likely German influence though.hebrew:
there are many options to reply to thank you, but the one equal to bitte is bevakasha.
No I meant like Italian Prego and English Pray. Pray in English was used to mean "please", though unlike Prego, wasn't used as a reply to "Thank you".To me "je vous en prie" is more polite than "de rien" by the way but what I mean is that I can't give a literal translation of "je vous en prie" ("I pray you of it"?!!)
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You're right. In this context je vous en prie is an idiom meaning "you're welcome", of course, but in other contexts it does means "please". (A more literal rendering would be "I beg of you".)Isn't "Je vous en prie" just the same?!
It is quite common to say nothing in response to "Thank you" in England; it is not considered coarse manners here - but if I buy something in a shop and say "Thank you", the shop assistant sometimes responds with "Thank you", or "No, thank you", with a heavy contrastive stress on "you", which implies "You shouldn't be thanking me; I should be thanking you". This is difficult for speakers of languages that don't have contrastive stress.Waiters in America have started saying "no problem" instead of "you're welcome". According to the "how-to-behave" rules this is said to be rather impolite. But I think not saying anything when someone else says "thank you" is considered very coarse manners. It is highly interesting to learn that this is handled so differently in England. What is the person who has been thanked supposed to do (in England)? Just ignoring the "thank you"?
Surprisingly, there is the same construction in Russian:To me "je vous en prie" is more polite than "de rien" by the way but what I mean is that I can't give a literal translation of "je vous en prie" ("I pray you of it"?!!)
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That would be a strange usage. If there's an initial "bitte" the second "bitte" afterwards sounds out of place.The German etiquette goes like this:
- Bitte schön. (you are giving)
- Danke schön. (you are receiving)
- Bitte schön.