"The pasta, please!"
Translation:Pastan, tack!
22 Comments
Almost, but a Swedish person would most likely say ”tack” here. ”Snälla” is much more begging. If the person in the example refused to give you the pasta, and you’d say ”pleaasee?” then you’d use ”snälla”.
Thanks for the explanation! Although it might not be conventional, I still don't see why "Pastan, snälla!" is marked as incorrect though.
Lundgren8 is spot on, just wanted to add that you could say "Kan du vara snäll och skicka pastan?" (normal, but needlessly polite) or "Kan du snälla skicka pastan?" (this sounds childish though, but otherwise same as the one before).
"Kan du skicka pastan?" followed by a "Thanks." is probably how I'd do it. "Pastan, tack!" is a bit too frank in my opinion. :P
I wonder as well if tack goes for thanks and please. It sounds so weird in English and in my native language also. And if so, then after you get your pasta, you should say tack once again, or its too much thanking?
Tack doesn't go for please, but it is used in most cases where, in English, you would say please. Too much thanking? There's no such thing as too much thanking in Sweden!
Actually, I'm not sure this is so different from English usage, at least in whatever dialect I speak... I can easily imagine being in, say, an Italian restaurant, having the waiter ask me what I want to order, and responding "Pasta, thanks".
So snälla should be accepted but with a short note explaining the nuances of common usage for tack vs snälla. Tack!
I dont quite understand. If tack means thank you and sälla is please, wouldnt snälla be better? If tack would be better because the person has already given you the pasta then why does it just say "the pasta thabk you"
I think what they're trying to say above is that, while "snälla" might be grammatically correct, it isn't idiomatically what most native speakers would say in that situation. Languages don't always follow the rules, not even their own! In cases like this, sometimes it's just best to accept what the native speakers are telling us even if it doesn't seem to make sense.
Thanks i understand. The english lanuage doesnt quite follow the rules either does it? XD
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I used "snälla".... I thought it could be either tack or snälla..............
See, languages are not constructed as direct translations of English. Each language evolved differently, with different needs and characteristics. "Tack" doesn't mean "thanks" or "please". In some cases where an English speaker would say "thanks", and some other cases where they would say "please", Swedes say "tack". It's a different word. I prefer thinking about languages in that way, independently.
Agreed! I have just read an article suggesting that we should not learn a language as a translation of English but as a language in it's own right.. I guess that's how we learn a language as babies/children.. we don't translate.
