Funnily enough, there is a *semi* serious answer (that you probably know); I doubt it applies to German, but I seem to recall some languages not coping with the "me applies to an inanimate object its written on" phenomenon many subscribe to.
OTOH, maybe they're trying to make up for "shardenfreude[1]" being a word.
The literal translation of the imperative if you're trying to be polite would be "lesen Sie mich": that's too long and doesn't sound all that polite anyway. It's very common and comes across as less demanding to use the infinitive+bitte in notices where we would use the imperative. But then it doesn't work to have "mich", since there's no speaker, and in any case you might as well omit "mich" since "please read" would work perfectly well in English.
"lesen Sie mich" and "lese mich" (polite and familiar forms of imperative) both seem to be used for "read me" in other contexts so I think the answers that imply that they can't be are ingenious but wrong...
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Date: 2007-12-09 12:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-09 02:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-09 03:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-09 03:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-09 05:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-09 11:49 pm (UTC)Funnily enough, there is a *semi* serious answer (that you probably know); I doubt it applies to German, but I seem to recall some languages not coping with the "me applies to an inanimate object its written on" phenomenon many subscribe to.
OTOH, maybe they're trying to make up for "shardenfreude[1]" being a word.
[1] Firefox dictionary suggestion: "case-hardens"
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-10 09:00 am (UTC)"lesen Sie mich" and "lese mich" (polite and familiar forms of imperative) both seem to be used for "read me" in other contexts so I think the answers that imply that they can't be are ingenious but wrong...
(disclaimer: not a fluent German speaker)