Yesterday, I read this promise in an insurance advertisement: “Wir lassen Sie nicht allein” — “We don’t leave you alone.” Having been besieged before by insurance agents who wouldn’t stop calling, I found the sentence a little alarming. But a German wouldn’t read it that way. If Germans want to be left alone, they don’t say, “Leave me alone.” They say, “Lass mich in Ruhe” — “Leave me in peace.”
Clare B. Dunkle
