you're welcome

Does anyone know how to say “you’re welcome” in Latin?
Of course in the sense of
A:“Thanks”
B:“You’re Welcome”

The odds are that form isn’t in any text we have however. :cry:
We can try to invent a form based on modern romance languages (i.e. Italian, Spanish and French). In this three languages we say:

  • di niente / de nada / de rien
  • non c’è di che / no hay de que / no french translation
    I think we should work on the latter.
    What do you think about that?

Hmm… no I don’t. Maybe they didn’t have such a thing, you don’t in British English.

The british do say ‘you’re welcome’, but amongst the youth of today it is usually used in a case such as this:

(Bill punches Cecil for no apparent reason.)

Bill: ahaaaaah!
Cecil: ugh…thanks…
Bill: You’re welcome!

Yeah, but only because they were watching american TV series. Anyway you’d better ignore my posts today, as right now I’m drunk :stuck_out_tongue: .

:open_mouth:

Are you a mother? And off it? And what the enfer are you talking of?

Who, me?

If any Roman says “gratias ago tibi”, you reply “nihil laboris est” or “aliud cura”. Mind you, none of them has ever said thank you to me…
:open_mouth:

Did the Romans say anything in reply to gratias ago? Citation please. If they didn’t, we don’t need to translate ‘you’re welcome’.

  • what if they did and we don’t have any extant examples?
  • what if we want to use phrases that they did not necessarily use?

:slight_smile:

I’d like to reply to vinobrien.
how can you say the romans said “aliud cura” or “nihil laboris est”?

Yes “nihil laboris est” sounds sweet and has the “nichts zu danken” (i think) feel…or ça ne me fait rien… :slight_smile:

Yes, the Germans to day ‘nichts zu danken’, but more often it’s just ‘bitte’.

1 - I find it hard to believe that a common figure of speech would not have survived in any of the remaining Latin texts, especially the personal letters, common plays, and dialogues.

2 - Yes, we do seem to do that a lot, don’t we?

Ok, I found this in my idioms book:
aufer mihi ista

…it seems like the Romans were either very modest or else refused to accept thanks :stuck_out_tongue:

In reply to doctissimo Tadwelessare, nihil laboris est is used by just about every conversational Latin guide but I can find no primary text so we can presume one or more of the following:
a. I have not read the entire corpus of Latin literature
b. it’s somewhere in Erasmus
c. it’s something medieval
c. it is the accepted neo-Latin phrase

For aliud cura, try Terence’s Phormio

De. quid mihi dicent aut quam causam reperient? demiror.
Ge. atqui reperiam: aliud cura.

Now, was “binobrien” bad typing or wishful thinking?

sorry, bad typing, I’m going to correct it

I’m going to post a poll on this subject

Actually, you could say “il n’y a pas de quoi” in French.