Comments on: Spanish People Is Weird

By: Jose

Jose — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:59:19 +0000

Troy,
It is true that English uses these modal verbs for politeness, but other languages like Spanish and Japanese also have their distinct mechanisms for coding for politeness.
A polite way to “ask for the salt” in Spanish would be: “¿Disculpe, podría usted pasarme la sal porfavor?” (Excuse me, could you pass me the salt please?). Another option would be: “¿Tendría usted la bondad de pasarme la sal?” (Would you be so kind as to pass me the salt?) “¿Me puedes pasar la sal?” (Can you pass me the salt) would be more informal, versus “pásame la sal” (pass me the salt), which would be an order.

In the first example ‘disculpe’ means excuse me and ‘podría’ is effectively a modal; it is the same as ‘could (you)’. ‘Podría’ is also conjugated (podria instead of podrias) according to ‘usted’ which is the most formal form of tú (2nd person). ‘Usted’ actually comes from medieval times when superiors would be addressed with ‘vuestra merced’ used like ‘your honor’; the phrase eventually coalesced into ‘usted’ which is reminiscent of the old term. Additionally phrases like ‘si me hace el favor’, ‘si te place ‘(like si vous plait, but rarely used), si no te molesta are all polite conditionals inserted at the end of petitions; the first one translates to: “if you would do me the favor”. ‘Por favor’(please) can also be sprinkled liberally for politeness. The placement of the modal at the beginning of the sentence as in “puedes pasarme la sal?” is also characteristic of polite requests. (The modals also go at the beginning of the sentence in English. e.g: ‘could you’)

If any language takes the prize for politeness, however, it most certainly goes to Japanese. It has a whole case of verbs ending in -masu (arimasu vs. aru). The same goes for the pronouns. For example the pronoun ‘I’ (male) in Japanese has 4 levels of politeness which I’ve listed here in descending order: watakushi (most formal), watashi, boku and atashi, and ore (most informal). Also to ask if there is water in Japanese, the negative form of the sentence is perceived as more polite. “Mizu ga arimasen ka?” (is there not water?), rather than a more direct “Mizu ga arimasu ka?” Also Japanese use polite phrases such as shitsurei shimasu which would literally translate to something like ” I am infringing on your space” but in practice is used like “excuse me”.

In summary, other languages, as is the case with Spanish and Japanese, may in addition to modals, use polite pronoun and verb inflections and softening phrases in order to code for politeness. At least I know that English also has tons of softening phrases, but in current usage it doesn’t have polite cases for pronouns and verbs. Hope this helps

And for the record, Spanish isn’t weird, it is beautiful!! I admit it can be confusing though, especially verbs which may have up to 50 conjugations each. heck! even pronouns, articles and articles conjugate according to the nouns. The adjective-article-noun agreement of gender, must seem meaningless to foreign learners, but I think that other than those specific words where a distinction is made for real gender as for movie actor (actor-male), (actriz- female) this may be used for phonetic-aesthetic reasons. Indeed, after studying Spanish for a while, one gets an intuitive sense of the gender agreement, no kidding. Even for new words.

By: Troy

Troy — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:05:07 +0000

As a supposed language teacher who has taught various ‘peoples’, I completely understand what you are saying here. I remember learning something about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis when I studying to become a teacher. The idea more or less states that inherent cultural traits are expressed through language, or something like that…it’s been a long time. I also remember some study done on a tribe in the Amazon that didn’t have the words for 4, 5, 6 etc and therefore couldn’t grasp the concept (meaning they have the words 1,2, 3 and more)…interesting stuff really, but can’t for the life of me remember what it’s called.

To take the idea a step further, just because we use modals when asking for things (could, can etc) does that make English speakers more polite, or is it just formulaic use of language?

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:09:18 +0000

Ray: You live in Andalusia, don’t you? If you ever find yourself wondering whether “usted” is appropriate or not, just slur the end of the verb a bit and don’t use a pronoun — “tu” and “usted” sound almost identical. Spanish is such a context-driven language that ambiguity is fairly easy to achieve, have patience, it’ll come to you.

By: Ray Tibbitts

Ray Tibbitts — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:12:16 +0000

Sometimes, when I meet a new person, whether THEY are English or Spanish…

English has developed some pretty good tricks for masking the number and gender aspects of language, for when you don’t want to be specific. I know there are other examples, but I can’t think of them. I’m sure it’ll come to me the next time I’m explaining to my wife who I was hanging out with, and where.

Seriously, though, it’s one of those things that I like about English; the ease at which I can inject the desired amount of ambiguity into the conversation, and I wonder if I will ever be able to learn how to do it in Spanish.