S’il vous plaît

silver plate / s’il vous plaît / please

I always assumed that the use of “silver plate” in Nanny Ogg’s “fake foreign” was Terry Pratchett’s invention. I was quite surprised to find it listed as one of “American fighting words and phrases”. In the same capacity of course — as a way to remember how to say “please”, “s’il vous plaît”, in French. Maybe it is more widely used than I thought.

While we are on the subject, did you know that “Yellow blue vase” sounds like a very polite and formal (and not very well pronounced) “I love you” in Russian? If you didn’t, let it be your daily bit of useless knowledge.

Continuing with free associations: in a Russian folk tale there is an episode where a silver plate (saucer, to be more precise) and an apple were used for divination. This explains the weird writing on the sketch.

I am not sure whether all the above will help me to remember the spelling of s’il vous plaît, but silver plate is now etched in my memory.