On Minding Your Language

Hat tip to Tyler...

"English-speakers are keen to say please politely in other languages, even if those languages do not express politeness by constantly saying please. So English tourists say ‘por favor’ to waiters and barmen in a way that sounds too insistent to a Spaniard. It is as if someone were to say: ‘A glass of wine, if you please, my good man.’ If you want the butter passed in Spanish, you say, ‘Pass the butter.’ To add por favor can smack of impatience."

http://www.spectator.co.uk/print/the-magazine/the-week/3453076/mind-your-language.thtml