I took French in high school. And my father was three-quarters French. So it is a language that has always been near and dear to my heart.
But one thing that they didn’t cover in French class. How do you say ‘please, please, please!’ in French, that is, like you are pleading with someone? I know ‘please’ is translated as ‘Si vous plait’, no? But ‘Si vous plait, Si vous plait, Si vous plait!’ just sounds too cumbersome. So it couldn’t be that. Am I wrong?
My own French is a bit rusty, but I don’t think there’s a direct equivalent to “please” in the sense of one single word for a request that flows smoothly even if used several times in a row. If the intention you want to express is that of begging submissively for something, then I think you can use a more humble formulation, such as “Je vous (or “te”) prie”.
The spelling is “s’il vous plaît” (or “s’il te plaît” for a person you’re on “tu” terms with), by the way - which literally translates as “If it pleases you”.
An extra-short version is that you can’t expect to translate something straight across.
There’s a thread somewhere around here, not all that old as these things go, about translating idioms.
In this case, please x3 is idiomatic wheedling or begging, generally in the context of a kid really laying on an extra-long e in the last “please”. Pleeeeeeeeeeease. You’ll have to work a bit harder in French, though “je vous en supplie” is probably the closest generic begging thing I can give you on short notice.
The rest, of course, is context.
And that’s why the French never produced their own James Brown.
The French language is good for some things but flops on others. “Au secours!” doesn’t carry nearly as well as “HELP!”
I had a high school teacher who told us that the real reason for the fall of the Roman Empire was that “auxilium”, the Latin word for “help”, is four syllables long. If you’re falling in a pit or something, by the time you could ask for help, it’d be too late.
“M’aidez!”
Which, maybe possibly kinda totally, got anglicized to “mayday”.
(In my experience, linguistic histories that seem to make sense absolutely don’t.)
I’ve heard that story about “mayday” and “M’aidez!” as well, but I never quite believed it. Isn’t that ungrammatical French, with the correct wording being “Aidez-moi!”?
It appears to be true
“Please” has a number of different meanings: to make someone happy, to beg for something, as a formality…
Saying it multiple times might depend on the intended meaning rather than a direct translation: Is this for a song translated from English? Are you really saying “c’mon, c’mon, I’m begging you!”, is this trying to emphasize how hard one tries to please (I would like to super-please you)? Each might be expressed differently.
“Aidez-moi!” is the imperitive form, the shouty, commandy sort of way.
“Voulez-vous m’aider,” is the… whatever-it-is-form. You know, the form that’s not the other form. Both are certainly grammatical.
There’s probably some exotic case, the ship-is-going-down-with-all-hands verb tense, where “m’aidez!” is preferred to “m’aider!” but they sound the same so, hopefully, people hadn’t stopped to give the captain in distress an earful about spelling.
True, but MAYDAY (the English spelling version of m’aidez or “help me”) has become internationally known and accepted.
ETA: ninja’d.
@Dr_Paprika Not for a song. I just wanted a general translation. If it helps, while I was writing the OP, I was thinking perhaps on begging someone to stop. E.g., Stop hitting me, or something like that.
I’m no expert.
“S’il vous plait” means “if it pleases you” and is purely a formality. You wouldn’t really repeat that. There is a circumflex on the i, which I am too lazy to include.
“C’mon, c’mon, do it! I beg you!” might be along the lines of “Allons, allons, Fais-le, je t’en prie!”. “I would like to please you”: je voudrais faire vous plaisir.
“Stop that. Stop. Bad.” might be along the lines of “Fais pas ca. Arret. Mechant(e).”
I suppose you could say something like “pitié !” or “je t’en supplie” ?
I suppose you could. It would sound weird in Quebec, though. I’d say it as I did above.
At least they weren’t singing Chevaliers de la table ronde or Sacre Charlemagne.
In which case ‘stop stop stop’ might be better French than ‘please please please’? I don’t know languages, but ‘stop stop stop’ is good Italian.
you mean “arrête arrête arrête arrête arrête arrête”:
IME of overhearing harassed mothers in France it’s “ARRÊTE! AR-RÊT—TE-!”
Plus in extremis, an emphatic addition, like “Merde!” or even “Putain!” (the latter definitely NSFW).