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Unpolite or impolite?
I'm at a hardware store, a lady calls a teller to ask something, me and my wife line behind the lady because we also need an info.
While she… There's a first to all, but yesterday was a first to me.
I'm at a hardware store, a lady calls a teller to ask something, me and my wife line behind the lady because we also need an info.
While she is busy with the teller I'm talking to my wife, the lady is objectively not far from us, something like 1m away. But we want to avoid someone "pretending" not to see us and cut the line. We also need info.
After about 5 minutes and while the lady was talking to the teller, she suddenly turns to us and in a rather resentful voice says. Can you please go chit-chat somewhere else? All your chitchatting behind me is really annoying and it does not allow me understand what I need to ask the teller.
I'm lost with words for a few seconds, but then I answer. Your request is completely inadmissible further to being very unpolite. You are free to leave if you don't like the situation, but we are not going anywhere and we will not stop talking.
She turns stymied mumbling. The word is impolite, not unpolite.
Now, I admit it is a bit quaint, but is the word unpolite really wrong? 🤣
I think it's a legitimate word in English, like the words flippant, or entitled, or pretentious.
Am I wrong?
ngl the "unpolite" thing is just a bonus to the whole situation. she was clearly in the wrong and doubling down on correcting your vocab was petty. but yeah "unpolite" is one of those words that shows up in older dictionaries but sounds off to most native speakers. "impolite" is the standard, has been for ages. if you'd said it at the Obi on Landsberger Allee I'd have assumed you were either pulling my leg or learned English from a 19th century novel.
still, the real story is that she told you to stop talking in a hardware store. that's not normal. even at Bauhaus where people can be intense, nobody expects silence at the service counter. you were right to stand your ground.
You're not wrong in spirit, but "unpolite" is one of those words that's technically in the dictionary but nobody actually uses. "Impolite" is the standard form in modern English, and has been for a long time. I hear "unpolite" occasionally from older Berliners who learned English decades ago or from non-native speakers, but if you'd said it to me at Baustoff Union I would have thought you were reaching.
That said, she was way out of line. You were a metre away talking at a normal volume in a hardware store, not in a library. If she couldn't handle background conversation while asking about Schrauben, that's her problem. And correcting your word choice on top of it is peak Berlin passive-aggression.
honestly the word thing is a side show. she was rude as hell and you handled it fine. impolite or unpolite doesnt change that she told strangers to shut up in a public store. thats weird behavior.
What is the correct spelling for a street name that appears differently on multiple signs in Charlottenburg?
Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.
if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point
honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.
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