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Rude or polite in foreign languages

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
28 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4 
Serpent
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 Message 25 of 28
02 November 2013 at 4:25pm | IP Logged 
I even talked about them at my Finnish C1 exam because I needed to say something about ecology (I chose the topic myself but other topics were even worse hehe). There's a Finnish brand so they are well-known over there.
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Chung
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 Message 26 of 28
04 November 2013 at 2:29pm | IP Logged 
I realized that I just put in my log an example of this difference between a Slavonic language (namely Slovak) and English when it comes to politeness. Here's the example:

On Nov. 3, 2013 at 20:59, Chung wrote:



2) “Young man, may I sit down? – OK, OK. – Awful ignoramuses, these young folk. That’s [just] insolent.”
3) “Sir, don’t you want to sit down too?” [literally: “Uncle, don’t you too want to sit down?”]
4) “Do I look like I need it?!”


The old man's request in the second panel actually matches best with "Young man, won't you let me sit?". By Slovak standards this is polite with the use of the negative and the verb's 2nd person formal/plural ending (i.e. nepustíte instead of nepustíš). However when I translated this to English, I used a positive and "may" (i.e. "Young man, may I sit down?") because if I were in the old man's shoes I'd feel better to use some kind of positive modal construction. Using a positive conditional would also seem suitable to me along the lines of "Excuse me, could I please sit down?")

A close translation of the Slovak request seems blunt and very slightly confrontational to me because it avoids the conditional and the positive. Instead the combination of the indicative with its undertones of fact ("You're not letting me sit. Why?" - as opposed to the hypothetical world of the conditional) and the negated (i.e. "you are not letting me sit down even though its typical for a young person in this country to give up his/her seat to an older person or a pregnant woman without being asked") is more pointed in my view.
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Solfrid Cristin
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 Message 27 of 28
04 November 2013 at 2:52pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
I realized that I just put in my log an example of this difference between a Slavonic language (namely Slovak) and English when it comes to politeness. Here's the example:

On Nov. 3, 2013 at 20:59, Chung wrote:



2) “Young man, may I sit down? – OK, OK. – Awful ignoramuses, these young folk. That’s [just] insolent.”
3) “Sir, don’t you want to sit down too?” [literally: “Uncle, don’t you too want to sit down?”]
4) “Do I look like I need it?!”


The old man's request in the second panel actually matches best with "Young man, won't you let me sit?". By Slovak standards this is polite with the use of the negative and the verb's 2nd person formal/plural ending (i.e. nepustíte instead of nepustíš). However when I translated this to English, I used a positive and "may" (i.e. "Young man, may I sit down?") because if I were in the old man's shoes I'd feel better to use some kind of positive modal construction. Using a positive conditional would also seem suitable to me along the lines of "Excuse me, could I please sit down?")

A close translation of the Slovak request seems blunt and very slightly confrontational to me because it avoids the conditional and the positive. Instead the combination of the indicative with its undertones of fact ("You're not letting me sit. Why?" - as opposed to the hypothetical world of the conditional) and the negated (i.e. "you are not letting me sit down even though its typical for a young person in this country to give up his/her seat to an older person or a pregnant woman without being asked") is more pointed in my view.


I had this exact thing happen to me a few months ago. En elderly person (75+) asked a teen ager on the bus if she could have her seat, and then the girl next to her jumped up and asked if I would like her seat. I almost tripped over in shock, but managed to thank her politely and accept the seat gracefully, as well as commenting to her teacher (who was also there) how happy I was that the youngsters were so well brought up. My interior monologue was much like the character in your comic though - and I felt 110 years old.
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Lorren
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 Message 28 of 28
05 November 2013 at 4:22am | IP Logged 
Unless your photo was from 10 or 20 years ago, I wouldn't take you as anywhere near 110 years old :-) (and even then, not that old... you'd probably have several decades to go before you started getting close).

But it was nice of them to think of you. I remember when I was six months pregnant with my daughter... we went on a trip and had to take a shuttle out to the plane because it was a small airport (Naples, Italy). I ended up sitting on the floor because there were no seats and I didn't think I'd be graceful enough to stand, and everybody wanted to keep theirs. Sometimes going a little overboard with the politeness is better than not giving enough of it.

Edited by Lorren on 05 November 2013 at 4:23am


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