Saturday, June 11, 2011

"service", not "サービス" = 0

In katakana, the word "サービス" usually means "for free" or "a discount" (on the price).

BUT in English, "service" doesn't mean that, so please be careful :)

So in a shop ....
"I'll give you this one for free."
"We baked a new kind of cookie. Here, would you like to try one?"
"It's almost closing time, so bread is 10% off."
"I'll give you a 20% discount if you buy 3."

Please check "service" in your English dictionary to find all the regular meanings. There are lots!

Today, I took my car for its 6 monthly service. What does that mean? Well, every 6 months I take my car to the dealer where I bought it and they check that it is running smoothly. If you look at the photo, you can see all of the points they check.

My car is now only 18 months old, so it has no problems at all. This morning, it only took 30 minutes for the mechanics to service (verb) the car. To be honest, I was a little disappointed it was so fast because I was having a good time reading my book in the comfortable waiting area :)

No comments: