Phrases you can't stand...

BallistixOnZ490 said:
I remember when I first got an email with 'Ciao' at the bottom of it and never knew it was the term a lot of people use for bye pronounced as 'chow'.

Who even puts that at the end of written communication?
Click to expand...
By a lot of people... do you mean Italians?
 
BallistixOnZ490 said:
I do now, I thought it was just bye initially.

Guess I should start using hello / bye from any language I like in emails / letters now.
Click to expand...
Most reasonably cultured people could cope. Even Del Boy did it in Only Fools and Horses.

Bonjour rodders.
 
dLockers said:
Most reasonably cultured people could cope. Even Del Boy did it in Only Fools and Horses.

Bonjour rodders.
Click to expand...

I would have thought everyone would cope, we use words from different lanagues all the time that just becomes the norm (cafe, patio, chocolate etc etc) or just make up words like hello when there isn’t a word for it.

Bog standard practice is every day life.
 
Clearcut said:
Can't stand when women call each other 'Hen' and 'Chick'.
Click to expand...

Chick is a bit dated, maybe somewhere in U.K. women use it about other women, it’s certainly an old Americanism, maybe taken from the Spanish, chica, but if you don’t like ‘hen’, I’d give Scotland a wide berth, particularly Glasgow :cry:
 
Reuben klang said:
I would have thought everyone would cope, we use words from different lanagues all the time that just becomes the norm (cafe, patio, chocolate etc etc) or just make up words like hello when there isn’t a word for it.

Bog standard practice is every day life.
Click to expand...

Most people in the UK can't even cope with pronouncing foreign names, so it seems odd that they would be able to cope with foreign words for greetings and goodbyes.
 
BallistixOnZ490 said:
Most people in the UK can't even cope with pronouncing foreign names, so it seems odd that they would be able to cope with foreign words for greetings and goodbyes.
Click to expand...

A friend of ours who spent a couple of years in Paris when his wife’s job took her there did his best to pick up the lingo.
On their return, aware of my French connection, he’d finish emails and WhatsApps to me with “à la prochaine”, and if he and his wife went out to dinner with us, as we left the restaurant to go our respective ways he’d say “à bientôt.”
 
Jean-F said:
A friend of ours who spent a couple of years in Paris when his wife’s job took her there did his best to pick up the lingo.
On their return, aware of my French connection, he’d finish emails and WhatsApps to me with “à la prochaine”, and if he and his wife went out to dinner with us, as we left the restaurant to go our respective ways he’d say “à bientôt.”
Click to expand...

That's still kind of cultural appropriation that he expects anyone with a 'French connection' to be able to understand French.

Kind of like the whole 'No, where are your parent's from' thing.
 
“I’m not saying *controversial remarks go here*, but….”

No, you are saying that thing, you’re just suffixing it with a ‘but’ so you can distance yourself from what you’ve literally just said, just in case there’s a backlash to what’s usually a bitchy, passive aggressive comment that’s just been made.
 
BallistixOnZ490 said:
That's still kind of cultural appropriation that he expects anyone with a 'French connection' to be able to understand French.

Kind of like the whole 'No, where are your parent's from' thing.
Click to expand...

I take your point, although I don’t know if he knew anyone else with a French connection, but it wasn’t really cultural appropriation when he hit me with a couple of phrases, he knew that I could speak the language, and he’d met a couple of my French relatives prior to him leaving for Paris.
Indeed, although he really could handle French, he’d still occasionally ask me if X was masculine or feminine, as in un couteau, (a knife), m, or une fourchette, (a fork), f.
 
Jean-F said:
I take your point, although I don’t know if he knew anyone else with a French connection, but it wasn’t really cultural appropriation when he hit me with a couple of phrases, he knew that I could speak the language, and he’d met a couple of my French relatives prior to him leaving for Paris.
Indeed, although he really could handle French, he’d still occasionally ask me if X was masculine or feminine, as in un couteau, (a knife), m, or une fourchette, (a fork), f.
Click to expand...

He's taking the mick, or does he genuinely not know about Duolingo?
 
BallistixOnZ490 said:
He's taking the mick, or does he genuinely not know about Duolingo?
Click to expand...

I’ve no idea, he died around six years ago, had he been writing a letter or email he probably would have researched a noun for masculinity or femininity, but he’d sometimes ask me about male or female nouns when we were talking in a bar or restaurant.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom