I’m amused at how in some languages it is impossible to convey a want or a request in a particular way that is comparable to other languages.
In my native British English, a request would usually function as ‘excuse me, would it be alright if i have ……’ or, in some extreme examples, ‘would you mind terribly if ….’, wheras in my TL, Lev Arabic, it is ‘I want ….’ Or ‘give me…..’ with no real way of translating the BEnglish version without it being terribly clunky.
How polite is yours? I’ve heard that Japanese is impossible to speak without being polite.
All this interests me as the way of speaking must feed through to a culture. I know many people from abroad who look at Brit culture and don’t understand why we don’t say what we really mean or cut to the chase.
Btw, I’m not saying that other languages are inferior because it is less conventionally ‘polite’. Everything is relative.
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