Etiquette and changing of threads

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Mon, 2013-07-15 at 21:40 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> Just think about what you'd tell me, if I tell you: "You must do it
> this 
> way" ... You'd likely take it as a rudity.
> 
> However, this is the 1:1 translation of what Germans would use to 
> express what US Americans are likely to express as "You may want to 
> consider doing it this way" ... A phrase I would take as "pretended 
> politeness", when being used in German,

My ignorance of German is almost perfect, but I'm fluent in Spanish.
There one has the alternative of saying "hay que hacerlo así" (roughly
"one should do it this way") which is more neutral than a direct
reference to the other speaker and wouldn't normally be offensive. This
also works similarly in English. "You may consider, ..." is to my mind a
specifically American idiom which I've mostly seen in mailing lists,
though I have caught myself using it.

poc