"Thank you!"
~"You're welcome!"
A fairly basic exchange, neat, tidy, familiar. We are taught these phrases from the earliest possible age, and as children, we would rattle them off at the slightest twitch from a parents eyebrow. As we grow older, we become more adventurous with the tested, tried and true phrases. "Thank you" might be abbreviated to simply "thanks." "You're welcome" goes through any number of transformations: "No problem," "my pleasure," "don't worry about it," "any time," or even the locally ubiquitous "no worries." There are many more, I am sure, but you get the idea.
The point is that the function of "thank you" and "you're welcome" are familiar and comfortable.
So, when I put down a plate of food at the steakhouse, how am I supposed to respond to "Cheers"? It's not quite "thanks," but I think that they are expressing gratitude. Should I say "You're welcome"? Or would that be assuming too much? If someone said "Hello", you wouldn't necessarily reply with "Fine, you?" because, thought the person might very well inquire after your health, you don't want to anticipate them too much.
This is my quandary. People say it all the time and I never know how to respond!
Even more befuddling is the equally over-used "Ta." Just two letters and I am supposed to glean it's meaning from what, the inflection? That's not much to go on!
"Ta."
~"And ta to you as well, sir!"
I'll keep working on this one.
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2 comments:
Have you tried saying it to people and listening for their response? I did this a lot in Greece, and it enabled me to learn that "Parakalo" worked for, in addition to the textbook "please," "you're welcome," "have a nice day," and a sort of benevolent greeting. And probably other things too.
Or maybe the good people of Greece were jut messing with me.
Hm.
Good luck with your quandary.
dude, i think the repsonse to cheers might be 'enjoy'.
and the same goes for lots of things italian, especially the apparent most popular word in their languange- "prego", which not only means 'you're welcome', but literally 'i pray', and 'of course', 'right this way', 'excuse me', 'tell me', and so on and so forth... crazy, eh?
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