Podcast 115 B2 - Please, thank you expressions

How polite are the British?

'Please' and 'thank you' are words you learnt very early in your English studies. But do you know how to use them properly in English? There are also a lot of interesting expressions with these words. This is a B2 level podcast. Listen on and thank your lucky stars you found this podcast!

I suppose the subject of 'please' and 'thank you' is connected to the subject of polite language in English, so you may be interested in two earlier episodes I did on the subject of polite language. In podcast 109 I spoke about polite language in a restaurant and in podcast 106 I gave some interesting examples of polite conversations in a bookshop and having tea with the neighbours. So you may also be interested in listening to those episodes too.

B2 please and thank you - trains to Paris

I remember many years ago... this was before they had finished the construction of the Channel tunnel that connects England to France under the sea. If you wanted to go to France you had to buy a combined train and ferry or boat ticket, which was quite a long process. I was at Victoria train station in London. I was waiting in a queue to buy a ticket to Paris. In those days, there were no online bookings, so if you wanted a ticket you had to buy one from the train station. There were a lot of people in the queue. People from all nationalities, which I could hear from the different languages people were speaking. It was a hot day and everybody was probably hot and tired from travelling and most people had a backpack or suitcase with them. The ticket office clerk was obviously not a happy man. From the queue, we could all hear him shouting and being rude to the customers buying their train and ferry tickets. Suddenly, he got up from his seat, came out from the ticket office and shouted at the top of his voice (that means very loudly):

Please form an orderly queue! You're in England now!

'To form an orderly queue' means to stand in a very straight line. That man obviously thought that foreigners (non-English people) did not know how to form a queue. Presumably, he thought that politeness and order were qualities only the English possessed and that foreigners needed to be taught. However, although the ticket office clerk used the word 'please' when he shouted at us, this did not make him sound more polite. He was probably one of the rudest* people I've met.

The reason I'm telling you that anecdote is to explain that the use of words like 'please' and 'thank you' in Britain does not mean the British are more polite. It just means there is a language protocol in some areas of British society that requires these words in everyday dialogue and written communication.

Please as orders and requests

Let's look at this word, 'please', in more detail. 'Please form an orderly queue' is not a polite request. It's an order. When we put 'please' at the beginning of an order - it's still an order. Especially if the intonation stresses the imperative.

Please get off the grass. Now!
Please leave me alone or I'll call the police!

This word becomes a polite request when we use it with other polite modals such as 'could' or 'would you mind'. But the intonation must be more friendly too.

Could you get off the grass, please?
Would you mind getting off the grass, please?

When we are quite desperate, we might say 'please' twice to add strength to a request.

Please, please don't leave me! I need you, John!

We use it as a single word exclamation, often in a humorous way when we want somebody to stop behaving badly.

'Children, please! I can't hear myself think!'
'Sorry, miss!'

It's important to point out, perhaps, that 'please' is not usually used to ask people to repeat something we didn't hear correctly. We use the word 'pardon' for that.

'Could you tell me where the station train is, please?'
'Pardon?'

You could just say 'what?' but that might sound a little rude to many British people.

We don't use 'please' when we give things to people. Instead, we say 'Here you are!' or 'There you are!' or the Americans say 'There you go!'.

However, we use 'please' to accept things, of course.

'Shall I show you where the train station is?'
'Oh, yes, please. My English is very bad, sorry!'

But what about this one? If somebody says something we think is stupid, we might reply with 'please'. Remember the American tennis player (you probably don't if you're very young), John McEnroe, when the Umpire said his ball was out?

'Love - 15'
'What?'
'Love - 15. The ball was out, Mr McEnroe. Second service.'
'Oh, please! You cannot be serious!'

Expressions with 'please'

'Please' is also a verb, of course. Here are some expressions:

B2 salad please and thank you

I make him a nice meal in the evening and he says he's not hungry so the next day I make him a salad. And he says 'what's this? I'm not a rabbit!'
There's just no pleasing some people!

What about you? Are you...

easy to please?

or,

difficult to please?

or, perhaps you're,

impossible to please!

And is it important to be,

eager to please?

If you are 'eager' to please others, you want people to be happy with everything you do. But there is a wise saying by... Abraham Lincoln or was it Aesop from Aesop's Fables who said...?

You can please some of the people some of the time but you can't please all the people all the time.

Thanks and thank you

Thank you for listening to this podcast so far! I could say that another way. Thanks for listening to this podcast so far! 'Thank you' sounds more formal than 'thanks'. Remember that after 'thank you' and 'thanks' we often use the preposition 'for' so that means followed by the verb + ing. Always the infinitive with 'ing' after a preposition.

Thanks for being there!

I can remember my mother telling me when I was a child that after a birthday party I had to say to my friend's parents, who had invited me,

Thank you for having me!

And they would reply,

Thank you for coming.

Then there is the old Frank Sinatra song:

Thanks for the memory
Of things I can't forget...

I won't go on! Please send your complaints to the management, Practising English, Seville, Spain.

'Thanks' is a plural noun so we cannot say 'thanks you'. It's used with expressions like:

Thanks a lot!
Thanks a million!
Thanks very much!

So what do we answer when somebody thanks us?

'Thank you so much for inviting my son!'
'That's all right! Any time!'

'Thank you for helping me with this homework.'
'Not at all!'

or, perhaps,

Don't mention it!

The American alternative is becoming very common now in the UK and I must admit, I like it.

'Thank you for the lovely dinner!'
'You're welcome!'

Thank is also a regular verb, a transitive verb, so we can say things like:

He thanked her warmly / profusely for the meal.
I want to thank you personally for all the effort you've put into this project.
The mayor publicly thanked the volunteers for all their hard work.

So that means there is an imperative form, which we use in the expression I started this podcast with.

Thank your lucky stars!

I believe we all have a good reason to give thanks for things in our lives. Health - if we have it; money - if we have enough, family, children, love from our partner. So let's thank our lucky stars, as we say, for all those good things in our lives!

Thanks for listening!

*'Rude' is the opposite of 'polite'.