| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | Please and thank you Thread poster: Claire Titchmarsh (X)
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| It/fr childs | Aug 31, 2006 |
My half-italian half -french sons (11,9 and 7) usually use the magic words (I share texjax technique) but I still play dead if I don't hear s'il te plait or per piacere.
When my oldest son (nicknamed Gulli) was about 2 or 3 he once asked a "grissino" without using the magic word. So I told him: "Per..." and he answered: "Per Gulli!" (sorry the joke is only for italian speakers).
I don't know if it's a cultural problem. I think we have to adapt when living abroad. When I was a studen... See more My half-italian half -french sons (11,9 and 7) usually use the magic words (I share texjax technique) but I still play dead if I don't hear s'il te plait or per piacere.
When my oldest son (nicknamed Gulli) was about 2 or 3 he once asked a "grissino" without using the magic word. So I told him: "Per..." and he answered: "Per Gulli!" (sorry the joke is only for italian speakers).
I don't know if it's a cultural problem. I think we have to adapt when living abroad. When I was a student at university in Germany it stroke me that no one would hold doors. I kept getting doors slammed on my face but never gave up holding doors to others. ▲ Collapse
| | | | biankonera 
Latvia
Local time: 12:55
Italian to Latvian
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| another country - another experience | Aug 31, 2006 |
Id say my impression is that Italians are extremely polite and I seriously am absolutely fascinated by that. Sure, there are exceptions as in every country, but if I have to compare Latvia and Italia Id say Latvians are much more rude and arrogant in general (sorry and excuse me on the street or in any public place is such a rarity sadly... or so has been my misfortunate experience so far). Suppose its because people in their majority are "closed" if I can say so, while Italians are the absolute... See more Id say my impression is that Italians are extremely polite and I seriously am absolutely fascinated by that. Sure, there are exceptions as in every country, but if I have to compare Latvia and Italia Id say Latvians are much more rude and arrogant in general (sorry and excuse me on the street or in any public place is such a rarity sadly... or so has been my misfortunate experience so far). Suppose its because people in their majority are "closed" if I can say so, while Italians are the absolute oposite.
I personally like the positive Italian way of being all loud as it makes me feel its all alive (this doesnt regard the annoying noise etc) and what I know for sure they definitely know more about having fun in a very sunny and positive way than we here up in the North do.
As for kids not saying the magic words - I think that comes with age. If they see their parents being polite and having good manners they will want to be like that as well. Its all a natural thing Id say since kids are like amalgam where their parents reflect. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | the "terrible twos" | Aug 31, 2006 |
Hi Claire, despite the fact that I have no kids of my own I know quite a lot about the "terrible twos" phase that toddlers go through.
I agree with Anatovcav:
Anatovcav wrote:
As per your daughter, it is my theory that she is going to turn out fine. Because you care.
As for manners, I do remember being shocked (and envious, when I was a child) that my all-Italian cousins could just get up and go without asking "May I leave the table?" when they had finished their meal and the adults were still eating or talking over coffee.
On the other hand, I also remember my mother feeling proud when adults remarked "what nicely-behaved children you have!".
She'll make you proud...when the "terrible twos" are over, you bet!
| | | | Stephen Rifkind
Israel
Local time: 12:55
Member (2004)
French to English
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The informal, read rude sometimes, seems quite common to the Mediterranian culture. Israelis are infamously loud and rather rude by Northern European standards. Please and thank you are only said when meant, as thank you for letting me pass this course.
I am doing an intentional disservice to my daughter by making her be polite and wait her turn. It will make her life much harder in Israel, but better if she travels abroad.
Do what your conscience tells you is rig... See more The informal, read rude sometimes, seems quite common to the Mediterranian culture. Israelis are infamously loud and rather rude by Northern European standards. Please and thank you are only said when meant, as thank you for letting me pass this course.
I am doing an intentional disservice to my daughter by making her be polite and wait her turn. It will make her life much harder in Israel, but better if she travels abroad.
Do what your conscience tells you is right.
My two shekels worth.
Stephen Rifkind ▲ Collapse
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Jo Macdonald
Spain
Local time: 11:55
Member (2005)
Italian to English
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| Stick to your guns Claire | Aug 31, 2006 |
In time they’ll say please if you’ve got something they want and can’t get it unless they ask nicely.
About the cultural difference, you can ask for something nicely without using the word please, or demand it in a rude way using please and thanks.
Dad, have you got any spare change?
Dad, give me dosh now please. Thanks.
Kids will always try to find a way to get wha... See more In time they’ll say please if you’ve got something they want and can’t get it unless they ask nicely.
About the cultural difference, you can ask for something nicely without using the word please, or demand it in a rude way using please and thanks.
Dad, have you got any spare change?
Dad, give me dosh now please. Thanks.
Kids will always try to find a way to get what they want, and if what works is being polite and respecting people, that’s what they’ll do, not because it’s right, but because they can twist you round their lil’ finger that way. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | when P & TY can offend | Aug 31, 2006 |
Sometimes using please and thank you can have the opposite effect in other cultures. My father in law still feels uncomfortable if I add "please" to requests to do things, since he argues that if I am a full member of the family then I do not need to be so damn formal at the table when asking to pass the vinegar and oil. It is just not a family tradition here to add those words which "oil" British social relations.
After paying in shops here in Catalonia I cannot not say "thank you... See more Sometimes using please and thank you can have the opposite effect in other cultures. My father in law still feels uncomfortable if I add "please" to requests to do things, since he argues that if I am a full member of the family then I do not need to be so damn formal at the table when asking to pass the vinegar and oil. It is just not a family tradition here to add those words which "oil" British social relations.
After paying in shops here in Catalonia I cannot not say "thank you" - I can´t count how many times the shopkeeper has looked at me aghast and replied "No thank YOU" - Makes more sense I suppose, after all - no customers - no income.
Just be thankful in English we haven't got a "Thank thee/Thank you" added hassle
BTW my seven year old daughter now seems to manage the cultural switch when we are in English at home or in Spanish with Grandad.
[Edited at 2006-08-31 19:24] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Claire Titchmarsh (X)
Local time: 11:55
Italian to English
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TOPIC STARTER
"thank you" everyone for your comments, it's a very interesting topic. I'm hoping as Daniela said that it's partly an age thing, and she will grow out of it. Also very interesting what Patricia said: that her daughter only spoke Eng. to her non-Eng. speaking husband - my daughter will always respond in English a question in English from my husband who is Italian (especially when he is taking the mickey out of my accent) but 50% of the time she replies to me in Italian. Strange.
| | | | Refugio
Local time: 02:55
Spanish to English
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| Please and por favor | Aug 31, 2006 |
Since my granddaughter was about two, I have been teaching her to say please, por favor, thank you and gracias. My method, when she would ask for something, was to form my lips into the shape of a P, and wait for her to say please before i would give her the item. If she didn't provide the please without further prodding, I would say, "How do you ask?" and then she would say please. After receiving the item, I would mime the beginning sound for thank you, and she would almost always supply it; i... See more Since my granddaughter was about two, I have been teaching her to say please, por favor, thank you and gracias. My method, when she would ask for something, was to form my lips into the shape of a P, and wait for her to say please before i would give her the item. If she didn't provide the please without further prodding, I would say, "How do you ask?" and then she would say please. After receiving the item, I would mime the beginning sound for thank you, and she would almost always supply it; if not, I would ask "What do you say?" and then she would say it. The interesting thing has been that if I asked her, "?QuE se dice?", she would answer the corresponding "por favor" or "gracias". If I asked her, "What do you say?", she would answer the appropriate "please" or "thank you." Now that she is four, it is all completely automatized with no need for prodding. ▲ Collapse
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Susy Ordaz
Local time: 10:55
Portuguese to English
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| Good manners and Culture clashes | Aug 31, 2006 |
It´s was so nice to read the feed back from all the colleagues to the topic at hand. I personally enjoyed reading Juan Jacob´s posting.
I am Canadian and have been living in Portugal for 14 years, I have 3 girls aged 9, 8 and 2 and they refuse to speak English with me. However when it comes to manners if they don´t say "Please" and "Thank you" in English they´ll most certainly have to say it in Portuguese. It´s a question of persistance and endurance. Your little girl probabl... See more It´s was so nice to read the feed back from all the colleagues to the topic at hand. I personally enjoyed reading Juan Jacob´s posting.
I am Canadian and have been living in Portugal for 14 years, I have 3 girls aged 9, 8 and 2 and they refuse to speak English with me. However when it comes to manners if they don´t say "Please" and "Thank you" in English they´ll most certainly have to say it in Portuguese. It´s a question of persistance and endurance. Your little girl probably just needs time to adapt to the Latin cultural differences.
Don´t worry give her time! Good luck and cheers.
Susy Ordaz ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Italian wild children | Sep 1, 2006 |
I fear Italian children are famous worldwide for being noisy and not very obiedient (running around and shouting instead of sitting quiet at the restaurant table waiting for adults to finish eating).
I haven't traveled around much yet with my 3 and a half year old son, but at times I fear that in some European countries they would consider him quite rude. I don't consider him rude (normally, but with some very noticeable exceptions) but cedrtainly he is having some difficulties in coming t... See more I fear Italian children are famous worldwide for being noisy and not very obiedient (running around and shouting instead of sitting quiet at the restaurant table waiting for adults to finish eating).
I haven't traveled around much yet with my 3 and a half year old son, but at times I fear that in some European countries they would consider him quite rude. I don't consider him rude (normally, but with some very noticeable exceptions) but cedrtainly he is having some difficulties in coming to terms with social rules.
On the other hand I could not bring him up with what are usually considered typical British rules in terms of good manners. I hated them and considered them quite useless, so I could not apply them now. Good manners don't necessarily go hand in hand with Please and Thank you. The tone of the voice, the language and the contents express kindness, concern and respect much more than 1-2 single words.
When I lived in England I found the thank yous rather funny. A formal attitude, a habit, more than real respect and kindness.
I have the feeling that at 2-4 years of age, children are so full of life, curiosity, exuberance, that rules should be kept as essential as possible, gradually escalating them as they grow up.
Learning to become part of a community, which is really an adult community, is really so difficult for a child, full of things he doesn't understand ("why can't I pee against a tree in the street?" "Why must I wear a bathing costume at the beach? I didn't last year when I was 2.", etc. ). ▲ Collapse
| | | | | A question of age | Sep 1, 2006 |
Hi,
My children are 7 and 3 years old.
Please and thank you are also "magical words" at home and if I don't hear them then I haven't heard anything. Sometimes they say it spontaneously, sometimes I have to remind them to ask politely. Around 3 it seems that after learning the words and their use perfectly, they tend to refuse to say them just to experiment some feeling of power: "I choose to speak" - but then they have to face the consequences, i.e not getting what they want.
... See more Hi,
My children are 7 and 3 years old.
Please and thank you are also "magical words" at home and if I don't hear them then I haven't heard anything. Sometimes they say it spontaneously, sometimes I have to remind them to ask politely. Around 3 it seems that after learning the words and their use perfectly, they tend to refuse to say them just to experiment some feeling of power: "I choose to speak" - but then they have to face the consequences, i.e not getting what they want.
It's the same with languages. They might wish to show that they have a power over their parents and I'm sure that things will change when they grow up. Just keep asking for these polite words if you feel you need them and when your children are older they will notice that in some situations they can "forget" them and in others they can't.
Although my children are not really bicultural (considering my husband and I are from different regions only, not countries), as we live in my husband's region, Alsace, he would like to teach his mother tongue, Alsatian, to his children. It's no official language, but he speaks it with his family. Well, our daughter (7) strictly refuses to hear anything but French, she says she doesn't understand and please would you say it in French. She even declared that she didn't want to start learning a foreign language at school. She's not interested...
I think that we have to be patient with children because they need time to learn. And we also have to be more stubborn than them if we feel something is essential, until they understand it. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Laura Gentili
Italy
Local time: 11:55
Member (2003)
English to Italian
+ ...
| Very interesting topic! | Sep 1, 2006 |
I have triplets aged 7. They were born in Israel and we moved to Italy when they were almost 4. They had a big culture shock then. For example, they were used to go by themselves to the bathroom or to drink water without asking permission. In the Italian daycare (scuola materna) all teachers were complaining that my kids "did not know any rule".
This is to say that Italians are very "polite" if compared to other countries. In Israel people say to you (in Hebrew and in English): "what do yo... See more I have triplets aged 7. They were born in Israel and we moved to Italy when they were almost 4. They had a big culture shock then. For example, they were used to go by themselves to the bathroom or to drink water without asking permission. In the Italian daycare (scuola materna) all teachers were complaining that my kids "did not know any rule".
This is to say that Italians are very "polite" if compared to other countries. In Israel people say to you (in Hebrew and in English): "what do you want?" (instead of "what do you like"?) which sounded so rude to my Italian ears...
As for polite manners, I teach my children to say grazie and per favore all the time. Their teachers at school do the same. At age 7, most of the time they say it, sometimes they don't. I have noticed, however, that in general Italian people don't expect kids to be polite and well-mannered. If someone overhears me while I teach them to say hello to the neighbours, say thank you, etc. they usually say: Oh, never mind, leave him/her alone...
Laura ▲ Collapse
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| A slightly different perspective... | Sep 12, 2006 |
I'm looking at this from a slightly different perspective, as a Finn living in the UK - reading this thread, I got the creeping, uncomfortable feeling I'm not saying "please" (and maybe "thank you") nowhere nearly enough to be though polite by British standards (at least, by those people I don't know so well)... Minuscola said it really well:
minuscola wrote:
After a couple of weeks I was there, the "dad" came and told me: "oh dear, why are you so rude?...you say please and thank you so rarely!!!”
I was just astonished because I had always thought to be a polite and respective person. I think it is a matter of language/culture.
In Finnish, there's famously no such word as "please" (even though usage of "thank you" is average, I'd say ), so it's quite hard to learn the usage of it when first learning English (for example). As English is my language of habitual use nowadays, I *think* I'm quite competent in the usage of "please", but maybe I still don't use it enough...
But I think words are just words, it's not the words themselves but a matter of how they're used & what you do with them (as we as translators fully know)... As Jo Macdonald said: "you can ask for something nicely without using the word please, or demand it in a rude way using please and thanks" (the first part would apply to Finns, I'm sure Even though, as a nation, they're usually not thought to be among the most polite..).
Immediately I also became worried about my little daughter (4), as Finnish is her dominant/mother tongue, so she wouldn't have learned the correct usage of "please" with that (and we haven't lived in the UK very long yet); but I think the nursery school's doing quite a good job in instilling that into her. (I truly hope they haven't thought her rude, or me for not teaching her that, though!!)
I'm fully with Francesca Pesce on this:
I have the feeling that at 2-4 years of age, children are so full of life, curiosity, exuberance, that rules should be kept as essential as possible, gradually escalating them as they grow up. Learning to become part of a community, which is really an adult community, is really so difficult for a child, full of things he doesn't understand
I do feel the British society in general is sometimes a bit too strict on that...
So in summary, to everyone: please don't consider people rude if they don't use the same "politeness strategies" (words) as you do - in their culture, the same thing's probably expressed in a different way!
[Edited at 2006-09-12 21:58]
| | | | | Hmmm...which goes to show that... | Sep 15, 2006 |
...being bilingual is more or less a big deal, but being "bi-cultural" is the really big deal.
Reading through the thread I was just thinking how difficult it actually is to switch back and forth between cultural mindsets. It makes me wonder whether our son will get to be like this or whether I even want him to become like this. Very deep issues at stake here.
I, for one, know that although I am bilingual (and can speak and read well two other languages) I will never,... See more ...being bilingual is more or less a big deal, but being "bi-cultural" is the really big deal.
Reading through the thread I was just thinking how difficult it actually is to switch back and forth between cultural mindsets. It makes me wonder whether our son will get to be like this or whether I even want him to become like this. Very deep issues at stake here.
I, for one, know that although I am bilingual (and can speak and read well two other languages) I will never, EVER be bi-cultural, as in "Romanian-American". It just will never happen. There are about a million American culture aspects, linguistics included - that are absolute pet-peeves for me and which I would outlaw like the worst dictator if it was up to me.
Although I am aware of cultural relativism and all that stuff that pretty much says "anything goes, depending on the culture"... I just cannot really accept those things deep down in my psyche. I recently read somewhere some funny line, saying "you can take Romanians out of Romania but you cannot take Romania out of Romanians".
Well...that seems to apply to me.
With regards with issues like Thank You, Please, Hello, Good Bye ... many of these guys over here don't even really bother anymore from what I've seen.
Many of them just bust into a room, barely acknowledging the ones present, all in the name of good-ol' American casualness.
I would just pass a law based on which you'd be darn FINED if you failed to say "Hello" when you enter a room with human beings in it; and same would go for Good Bye when you leave it. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | It's a rum do | Sep 8, 2008 |
It’s almost in the genes.
I tell my Swedish friends that when they are in Britain the most important words in the English language are: please, thank you, and excuse me.
Swedish has no word for please. I still miss it after more than fifty years. But the Swedes offer thanks continually, ie, tack, or very often tack, tack.
They are usually polite but rather formal in their approach, shaking hands very often, and the males sometimes bow. Although this custom is receding.... See more It’s almost in the genes.
I tell my Swedish friends that when they are in Britain the most important words in the English language are: please, thank you, and excuse me.
Swedish has no word for please. I still miss it after more than fifty years. But the Swedes offer thanks continually, ie, tack, or very often tack, tack.
They are usually polite but rather formal in their approach, shaking hands very often, and the males sometimes bow. Although this custom is receding. Curtsying is almost extinct nowadays.
When in Rome ………. ▲ Collapse
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