I assumed they meant thanks but a Google search doesn’t give me that kind of result. What does dinata mean and what language is it from?
de nada
Spanish phrase
de na·da dā-ˈnä-t͟hä
: of nothing : you’re welcome
Or “bitteschön” in German.
Dunno how native speakers would do it, but usually I answer “bitte” for “danke”, “bitte schön” for “danke schön”.
Fun fact: saying “bitte” near my cat prompts her to rub her face on your leg. All the time. I speak in German with her, and when she obeys my commands I tell her “bitte” and pet her, so now she associated the word with being petted.
If they “danke schön” me, I’ll usually respond with “darlin’”.
I would translate it more closely to ‘keine Mühe’/‘keine Ursache’
Oder “nichts zu danken”.
Do you happen to know why it’s “keine Ursache”? That is a thing in Danish and Norwegian too (“ingen årsak”) and I always thought it was a weird phrase.
Swedish too. I’ve always assumed the implicit meaning is roughly “there is [no reason] to thank me”.
That makes sense. For some reason, I thought it was something like “no reason to do what I did”. So basically “Sure, totally no ulterior motives here, by the way!”, which seemed kinda weird to me.
Just as an additional tidbit, it’s the same in Portuguese as well!
[Additional tidbit]
Pronunciation-wise it’s typically different, although in a weird way - both languages allow some variation depending on the speaker’s variety, but they don’t coincide. For example in Portuguese you could get [dɨˑ’näðɐ̥ˑ], [de’nädɐ], [dʒi’nadɐ̥ˑ], depending on where the speaker is from, but AFAIK you won’t find Spanish-like [ð] without a completely “un-Spanish-like” vowel reduction. In the meantime I kind of expect some Caribbean Spanish speakers to render the expression as [de’nää] de na’a.
Very good point, in hindsight I should probably have clarified I was focusing on the written form when I replied
Definitely Spanish “De Nada” basically “it’s nothing” and the absolute default response to “thank you” in most Spanish speaking countries.
It means “fuck you sideways” in ancient Sumerian.
Really.
Pronounciation example, please
“De nada”? Which is really confusing as that is Spanish and “Danke” is from German.
Where I live people have mixed langauge conversations fairly regularly by mixing their native language with whatever they’re trying to learn - usually German or English, so that reaction is probably automatic.
When I was young (pre-internet) this reply always confused me, too. Unlike most of my peers, I didn’t take any language classes until college. Glad I’m not the only one who needed a little help!
