Asklemmy

43864 readers

1549 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

175

What happened to "You're welcome!" as a response to "Thank You"? It's not even included in the canned answers on an apple watch. Have we as a society abandoned it? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

190 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I hear "No problem" far more often.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I kind of disagree with you, in that when I think about the standalone meanings of the words in each phrase, I think they do say the same thing.

The meaning of the words "You are welcome [to the help I gave you]" implies, to me, that there wasn't actually anything to offer thanks over. You're acknowledging their thanks, but telling them that they are welcome to take/use whatever it is you're talking about. [EDIT: normally when someone tells me I'm welcome to something, I feel less compelled to ask and thank in the future. "You're welcome to anything in the fridge", for example.]

It does not imply, to me, that I would appreciate them returning the favour. That might be implied meaning in the phrase, but it's definitely not what those words mean by themselves.

In any case, "You're welcome", "no problem", "no worries", etc... are all idioms that mean something different than what their individual words mean. The phrases as a whole carry a different meaning than the words themselves suggest.