thank you you

i am not sure if it is due to the influence of the chinese language, but i do come across lots of chinese-speaking people saying "thank you to you" and "thank you you" quite often. i attributed it to the chinese language becos in mandarin, "谢谢" is used to mean "thanks" or "thank you". and when expressed in a courteous manner, one would usually add the word "you" or "你" as a suffix to it. thus, "谢谢你" or "thank you you", literally speaking.

and interestingly, and purely from my personal experience, i also observed more malaysians committing this error. this perhaps reflects the fact that malaysian education system played down the use of english and instead focus on the malay language as a priority. and so, the tendency for malaysian chinese who may not be so comfortable with the english language, the tendency would be to think in chinese, do the translation in the head, and then express it out in english, which may then be incorrect structurally or in this case, as a phrase. yes? maybe. but, it certainly makes the sentences funny. added to the fun, i often hear the phrase pronounced as "thank cute you". very cute right? heh heh...

for example, in a recent program i conducted, where the class comprised some close to 20 participants, one participant (from malaysia) thanked me this way at the end of the day. and becos it was done as a part of a group checking-out session, it was kinda interesting to see the reaction of the class. notably, the singaporeans giggled whereas many of the malaysians did not realize the error. then again, it was one of the malaysians (who realized the error) that highlighted it. the class had a good laugh over it and everyone learned from the error. it was such a closely-knitted team and the people were just so lovable!

:-)

ps: and for the record, the sms above was from a singaporean. ha!