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- "Please speak English."
"Please speak English."
Translation:英語でおねがいします。
37 Comments
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Shouldn't 英語でおねがい。 be accepted as well? I know it's not as polite as putting します at the end, but it still works, right?
Your proposed phrase means 'Give me English' in a literal way (as it follows directly after the direct object marker), as if English is a tangible object.
英語で話してください should be acceptable. 英語を話してください is not technically incorrect, but it is less common to use this particle (again, as English is not a tangible object). It sounds more like ‘Say something in English’, rather than ‘Speak English’.
ください, when used by itself, with no other verb attached, is a verb meaning to give; confer upon.
When ください is used after the て-form of another verb such as 話す, it serves a different function, that of 'please do for me what was stated previously in the clause', or put more simply: 'please'. In these cases, you should consider ください as an ancillary or helper verb (for lack of a better term).
おねがいします and ください function differently. With おねがいします, the principal verb is regularly omitted. おねがいします is kind of a catch-all, which encompasses the assumed (by context) main verb. That is not true for ください.
Take the following sentence:
いいアドバイスがあったらおねがいします。-If you have any good advice, I request (it).
If you wanted to use ください, you should include the verb for ‘tell’, ‘teach’, ‘say’, etc.:
いいアドバイスがあったらおしえてください。If you have any good advice, please 'let me know'.
One should also keep in mind that おねがいします sounds more humble/polite than ください, which is more direct/blunt.
If you want to explore the difference further, here are a couple of links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMgXlcgj8Y8
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-the-difference-between-kudasai-and-onegaishimasu-3572604
で in this case is marking the thing that is used to accomplish an action. You can think of it as 'by means of'.
I don't really see the relationship with what one eats.
手で食べないでください。 Please don't eat with your hands.
フォークで食べてください。Please eat with a fork.
The particle を would mark what one eats:
パン/ライス/すし を食べる Eat bread/rice/sushi.
I wrote 英語を話せ下さい is it just flat out wrong to be considered valid, or it makes sense but is just too rude because of the imperative? Or maybe を shouldn't be used in this case?
Ok, so I wrote 英語で話せ下さい now, and it's still not correct, so I think the particle isn't the only problem, perhaps 話せ is simply too rude. But I still want to include the verb in the sentence, is too boring to just say 英語でおねがいします like duolingo says is correct. In my opinion, that would translate to something like "In English please" but not in "Please speak English". I guess I'll try to use a more polite form of 話す and see what happens.
Can anyone explain why 英語でどうぞ should be wrong?
Aside from "because Duolingo follows some completely arbitrary rules on when it expects you to use what level of formality, marking your answer as wrong in one case because you included さん after a name and then turning around to mark a different answer as wrong because you used どうぞ instead of おねがいします", I mean.
Well, yes, but actually no. It also means "please" as in "here you go", that is correct. But native speakers use it far more commonly to make a request (just like お願いします would be used here) than to mean "here you go".
That's the first thing I thought of, so I asked my Japanese teacher, and she assured me she would use どうぞ in an informal context as well. That's why I took to this forum, to see if anyone knows about some underlying structure or rule Duolingo might try to teach us here by insisting on お願いします.
- Onegaishimasu should come at the end of the request clause.
- When using onegaishimasu as an alternative to kudasai, the verb is omitted. ('Eigo de hanashite kudasai' vs. 'Eigo de onegaishimasu')
- Eego → eigo
- 'Eigo de shimasu' is saying 'I will do it in English.' The te-form of a verb is used for requests.