[HN Gopher] Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
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Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
Author : ent101
Score : 466 points
Date : 2023-12-24 18:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (english.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (english.stackexchange.com)
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Thee and Thou are still used in Northern England (Yorkshire and
| Lancashire). Although probably only by older people and often
| spoken as Thi and Tha.
| eyphka wrote:
| Interesting, and are those used as the informal you? Or in
| reference to singular?
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| I think Thee would be for family, friends, or someone of
| equal social status and thou is more formal (but much less
| used now - only as tha: "tha's gonna get it").
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| That's fascinating , because it's originally a
| subject/object divide (equivalent to he/him)
| jameshart wrote:
| Definitely a formal/informal distinction.
|
| Old Yorkshire phrase for telling children to mind who they
| address as 'thee / tha': "Don't thee tha them as thas thee" -
| kind of a similar sense as 'mind your Ps and Qs'.
| Caligatio wrote:
| I feel like this must be fading because I lived in North
| Yorkshire for almost 5 years and never heard a thee/thou used.
| On the other hand, English dialects are hyper localized so
| there might be villages where it is normal.
| EGreg wrote:
| Go to Amish country!
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Don't they use Pennsylvania Dutch ???.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You're more likely thinking of Quakers. At least those
| still a part of the mid-Atlantic tradition historically use
| "thou" to avoid power distinctions. Not many still do this
| in daily speech, but it's not absolutely lost, and is
| sometimes used for emphasis in a conversation in which
| matters of power and equality are lurking.
| stordoff wrote:
| I definitely heard it more from my Grandfather, but I still
| hear it here in South Yorkshire. It seems to be most often
| used in common phrases, such as "What's tha want for tha
| tea?" or "What's tha doing?" (tha = thou/thy), or used for
| emphasis ("I'll tell thee what"), rather than as a general
| alternative though.
|
| > English dialects are hyper localized
|
| On a vaguely related note, has anyone else (particularly in
| Yorkshire) use "seef"/"seefing" to mean "see if"/"seeing if"
| (as in "I was seefing/seeing if it was in the car")? I hear
| it all the time from my immediate family, but I've never been
| able to find it referenced beyond that.
| aryonoco wrote:
| It is fading, and it hasn't been in widespread use for quite
| some time. However when I was in the UK, I definitely heard
| "tha" and "thissen" (yourself) on numerous occasions, mostly
| in common idioms and phrases, in South Yorkshire, especially
| around Barnsley and Rotherham. I don't think I ever heard it
| in major metropolitan areas like Manchester or Liverpool
| though.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Verily.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| It's not the most common, but 'ye' survives in Northern
| Ireland.
|
| 'What about ye?' - would be a friendly way of asking 'how do
| you do?'
| sampo wrote:
| "You" is the formal version. But as the answers explain, English
| did also have the informal version.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Yes. We think of "thee" and "thou" as being formal, because
| nowadays they are mainly found in religious texts. But they
| used to be informal, used when addressing friends and children.
| As the top answer explains, "thee" and "thou" eventually came
| to be considered rude.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| It isn't so much that they're mainly found in religious texts
| as that the most common English translation of the Bible is
| still the King James Version which is over 400 years old and
| "thou" was still part of the English language back then.
|
| The other other English text most people are familiar with
| that is older than the KJV would be the works of Shakespeare
| which arguably need to be translated to modern English at
| this point. English language works older than Shakespeare
| such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Beowulf are pretty
| much always read in translation.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| To be fair though, Beowulf in its original form would be
| incomprehensible even to well read native English speakers.
| Old English and Modern English are so different that
| they're no longer mutually intelligible even. Same goes for
| a lot of languages if you compare them to themselves a
| millennium apart. Or if their common ancestor was milennia
| ago.
|
| E.g Icelandic and Faroese aren't really mutually
| intelligible with Norwegian today, despite both being
| evolved directly from Old Norwegian, because both places
| were originally settled by Norwegian vikings.
|
| Shakepeare is essentially just very old school, yet still
| Modern English. This still feels within the realm of
| understanding of current day native speakers equipped with
| a good dictionary.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| /me native brit
|
| I was raised with the KJV and Shakespeare. To me, that
| language is definitely "modern english"; it doesn't need
| translating, any more than Scouse needs translating.
|
| I have a completely different relationship with Chaucer.
| But it's like reading a foreign language that I know, but
| not idiomatically; I can't be sure whether X is supposed
| to be sarcastic, or Y is meant to be as funny as it
| seems.
|
| Beowulf is some thing else again. That definitely seems
| to me like a foreign language.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I suspect actual spoken Anglo-Saxon (as by the common
| people, not the nobility) would probably more easily
| understood by a modern Dutch, Frisian, or Low German
| speaker than by a modern English speaker.
|
| Our language has been heavily heavily influenced in the
| interim first by Old Norse/Danish and then (a huge
| amount) by Norman French.
|
| I actually have an easier time with Anglo-Saxon than
| Chaucer, personally. Middle English has bizarre
| inconsistent orthography, and is full of French loans.
| While written Anglo-Saxon is pretty consistent and some
| of the vocabulary and grammar makes sense to me as
| someone who studied German a bit. Old English is a really
| beautiful language.
|
| But in general what we have in written records is what
| was written by the literate elites, not regular folk. So
| it's really hard to say what it would be like to be
| dropped into the villages of 15th century England.
| dahart wrote:
| I had never until just now considered the possibility that "you"
| might be the thorn misprint of "thou", just like how in "ye olde
| shoppe" was (according to legend) pronounced "the old shop"
| because Y got used in printing presses as a stand-in for the
| thorn "Th" character they didn't have, that looks kinda-sorta
| like a Y.
|
| Seems like the answers suggest I'm just imagining something that
| didn't happen, but it was a fun thought.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Eth is the character you're thinking if, not thorn.
|
| Eth has voice on and thorn voice off.
| dahart wrote:
| This says it really was thorn:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde#History
|
| D/d (eth) certainly is the voiced th in Old English and
| modern Icelandic. I'm not sure why thorn was being used for
| 'the'.
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| AFAIK thorn and eth were used in free variation, as there
| is rarely any possibility of confusion.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I would recommend consulting Prokosh Comparative Germanic
| Grammar.
|
| It's a very old reference and may not be online, but what
| my germanic linguistics professor used with us Germanic
| linguistics grad students. He was a world renowned expert
| on the various futhark versions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_H._Antonsen
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Prokosch's book is still available
|
| https://a.co/d/0u4S28Y
| blown_gasket wrote:
| I'm not huge on taking the Wikipedia entry at face value
| and prefer to look at the references used for the entry. In
| this case the reference CHAPTER 25 TYPOGRAPHY AND THE
| PRINTED ENGLISH TEXT, page 6, does mention that y/ye was
| used in place of both eth and thorn.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Mispelling or incomplete font set for printing press
| possibly?
|
| Note modern English collapsed the distinction into simpler
| orthography, "th" for both eth and thorn, so simplicity in
| spelling certainly happens.
| nicole_express wrote:
| The eth/thorn distinction was fairly arbitrary in actual
| written Old English, with thorn being more common. The modern
| distinction between eth and thorn being based off of voice
| originated in Icelandic, I think? That's the only language
| that still uses them in its modern form, anyways.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Icelandic preserves old Norse so you're accidentally
| implying Old Norse originated in its own derivative.
| nicole_express wrote:
| I admit I'm only going off of Wikipedia, but that claims
| (in the "Old Norse" article) that extant writings from
| that period used thorn exclusively, and again the use of
| thorn and eth as the unvoiced and voiced variants is a
| relatively modern convention.
| Symmetry wrote:
| I believe it was a stand in for y instead of Th, which is a
| much smaller leap.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Your first unicode character won't render in Windows.
|
| th?
|
| I can see it is LATIN SMALL LETTER Y + COMBINING LATIN SMALL
| LETTER S .. not sure what that ligature is, though. My
| knowledge of old English is very lacking :)
| mh- wrote:
| it's a lowercase _y_ with an _s_ over it, like you would
| see a diacritic rendered. never seen it before.
|
| edit: it shows up in the "descendants" list on the side of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| That seems unlikely. From wiktionary:
|
| _From Middle English you, yow, yow (object case of ye), from
| Old English eow ("you", dative case of ge), from Proto-
| Germanic_ iwwiz ("you", dative case of _jiz), Western form of_
| izwiz ("you", dative case of _juz), from Proto-Indo-European_
| yus ("you", plural), _yu._
|
| Gutenbergs printing press was the mid 15th century, well into
| the Middle English era.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| English has a second person pronoun ye which is unrelated to
| the orthographic transformation of definite article the into
| ye.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_(pronoun)
| twarge wrote:
| I went to school in the 90's with a wonderful person who grew
| up Lancaster Quaker and regularly had to suppress speaking to
| Professors with Thou and Thine. Lost the habit really quickly,
| but it was charming and very real.
| k__ wrote:
| In German, we use "sie" the German equivalent of "they".
|
| Thus, to be polite, you address someone as many people that
| aren't part of the conversation.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Dutch is similar with "U" being both singular and plural. Verb
| conjugation is the same for both cases.
|
| This has been interesting as an English speaker learning Dutch!
| Luckily I never really latched on to sms-speak but I can
| imagine some cohorts of English speakers have to break the
| habit of reading "u" as shorthand for the the full word.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| This lead me down a short Wikipedia rabbit-hole that is quite
| interesting (at least to me).
|
| Apparently Dutch originally had "du" as 2nd person singular
| and "gij" as 2nd person plural. From the 16th century, "gij"
| started being used as singular polite form. (Possibly under
| the influence of Latin and French.) Later, "du" disappeared.
| Up to this point, the progression is similar to English.
|
| "gij" then transformed to "jij" in the northern part of the
| Dutch language area and in written language; while it
| remained "gij" in Flemish spoken language.
|
| However, then in the 17th century people started using "Uwe
| Edelheit" ("Your Nobility") as a new formal form in letters.
| This evolved into the current formal pronoun "u".
|
| (Note also that the accusative form of "gij" is also "u", but
| is not related to the formal "u".)
|
| Sources: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gij,
| https://etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/gij,
| https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_(voornaamwoord),
| https://etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/u
| native_dirch wrote:
| Native Dutch speaker here. These days one doesn't capitalise
| the "u" except at the start of a sentence, however in older
| texts (40+ years?) it was usual to see the "U" pronoun
| capitalised at all times. Sorry if I'm mansplaining but I
| noticed you capitalising it and thought I'd point it out,
| because it would stand out to a modern Dutch reader.
|
| As for sms-speak, I'd be flabbergasted if you encountered the
| u-form anywhere in text messages except maybe in automated
| OTP messages from your bank. So I would guess that's
| something you needn't worry about :).
|
| Good luck in your language-learning journey. Assuming you're
| living in the Netherlands, I'm curious as to how your
| integration is going? My observation is that Dutch culture
| can be insanely hard for foreigners to get a foothold in,
| partly because of the "polite" tendency of most locals to
| insist on speaking English around non-native Dutch. I feel
| like that gesture, which may seem accommodating on the
| surface level, can almost be an exclusionary dynamic in
| itself.
| Tomte wrote:
| No, it's "Sie", not "sie", and therefore not identical to third
| person.
| sinkasapa wrote:
| This is why the British and people in the US do not act the
| same. The British have their behaviour while us Americans
| have our behavior. Totally different.
| konschubert wrote:
| That's just spelling.
| atoav wrote:
| In a German sentence a change in capitalization of Sie can
| very well turn a "formal you" (Sie) into a more general
| "them" (sie). So it is not just spelling, although it is a
| very common mistake.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Not to be confused with "sie", which means "she"
| vidarh wrote:
| This is a minor distinction to make it clear in writing, same
| as De vs de in Norwegian, and several other languages. It's a
| common way of turning a plural into a formal address.
|
| Incidentally, in Norwegian the formal form is now so archaic
| that short of communicating very formally with a very old
| person, in most cases it will come across as rude and
| sarcastic (you're implying someone is seriously up
| themselves)
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| The same is in italian "lei", except during fascism where they
| introduced as a formal way to address someone as "voi" which
| would be the plural of "tu"/"voi"
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Did they not like the feminine connection between "lei" and
| "Lei"? Or what was the motivation?
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Afaik it was because the "Lei" was considered elitist and
| because in the roman latin culture they had only the "tu"
| up to caesar introduced the "voi", so maybe you know
| fascists had some sort of fetish for the roman empire so
| they chose to bring the culture as close as possible closer
| to what roman culture was
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| Caesar didn't "introduce the _voi_ ". Is this an urban
| myth that Italians believe? The _tu_ / _vous_ distinction
| in Romance languages arose in medieval times. Not only
| did it not exist in Caesar 's time, it is absent from the
| centuries of Imperial-era literature in Latin.
|
| There is a wide literature on Latin forms of address.
| Eleanor Dickey's monograph published by Oxford University
| Press is a good survey.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I am not an historian but it seems so, I've found in the
| past few minutes two sources that attribute Voi to
| romans, its in italian but sure it can be translated,
| going to paste the original links unaltered
|
| https://www.elisamotterle.com/galateo-del-tu-del-lei-e-
| del-v...
|
| https://www.treccani.it/magazine/atlante/cultura/Diamoci_
| del...
|
| Beware the treccani is the most used/influential
| encyclopaedia in italy, so I'd tend to say that i trust
| them a lot
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treccani
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| Your first link backs up exactly what I mentioned above:
|
| > In antichita, quando si parlava latino, le formule di
| cortesia non esistevano ... L'usanza del Voi nasce
| insieme a una nuova formula politica: la tetrarchia
| introdotta nel 293 da Diocleziano.
|
| It was an innovation in Romance that took place centuries
| after Caesar and most of the Imperial era. Again, there
| is ample scholarly literature on this, so no need to
| resort to popular references like encyclopedias.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Yeah I saw that, but I'd say if that makes sense, that
| they're attributing the introduction of "Voi" within the
| roman era and not in the medieval times, right? The
| second one instead attributes it to "Roma Cesarea", to be
| fair, it is not the encyclopaedia that attributes it to
| "Roma Cesarea" but the article that influenced Mussolini
| quoted on the article on the encyclopaedia, so they're
| probably only quoting, but I don't know enough, so I'd
| trust you're right, thank you
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| Historians today tend to trace the ultimate fall of the
| Roman Empire to the multiple crises of the third century,
| even if the name of the empire limped on for a couple of
| centuries more. So AD 293 is quite a late date, on the
| threshold to a new era. From the viewpoint of modern
| historians, it is hard to understand how Italian Fascism
| could have seen anything that late as worth being proud
| of and emulating.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| It's much easier to understand if one doesn't assume that
| Fascism ever cared about academic truth.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Probably you're right, they just needed something widely
| known to make people feel some sort of national
| identity/united/proud and control them better
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > trace the ultimate fall of the Roman Empire to
|
| Or the plague and the subsequent Arab invasions. The
| empire was rebounded several times from near collapse
| after the 300s
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| The Western Empire was the only Roman Empire that the
| Italian Fascists ever really cared about. Early Byzantium
| was totally foreign to their mythology.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| It makes sense to me: high ranking people often have
| conversations which are on the behalf (or at least implicate
| the future) of large groups of people. Thus a plural formal
| second person, as well as the "royal we".
|
| (note that english aristocrats were often spoken of, not by
| given [or if they had one, family] name, but by the
| geographical entity that was the basis of their nobility)
| ribs wrote:
| Like in Spanish, where the formal second-person pronouns are
| the same as the third-person pronouns.
| k__ wrote:
| What about ellos/ellas?
| trealira wrote:
| I think they mean that the verb conjugations for the plural
| third person (ellos/ellas) and the formal plural second
| person (ustedes) are the same.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Some fun archaic ones on German[1]
|
| Interesting to see the use of "Er" as a put down.
|
| [1] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoflichkeitsform
| propter_hoc wrote:
| Second person pronouns are so fascinating!
|
| Not only is "you" the formal, polite plural form, but calling
| someone "thou" was also seen as so informal as to be rude (in
| verb form, to "thou" someone). This has a modern equivalent in
| the term "tutoyer" in French.
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/thou
|
| An interesting counterpoint is the usage in Japanese of
| sarcastically polite forms like oQian and Gui Yang , where you
| use a pronoun with a surface meaning of extreme respect, as a
| form of insult.
| Geisterde wrote:
| Shipmate is used to describe someone who you crew a ship with,
| such as in the navy, and is supposed to convey comradery. E
| xcept in its real world use, where its the social equivalent of
| referring to someone as "s**head".
| mgbmtl wrote:
| I guess like "comrade", any kind of imposed social norm
| becomes an object of satire?
| Geisterde wrote:
| I think so, I remember a joke bill burr made about any term
| used to describe the mentally underdeveloped will
| inevitably be used satirically.
| javajosh wrote:
| Interesting. I wonder if the similarity of the words "ship"
| and "shit" contributed to the development. Out of curiosity,
| what is the non-pejorative replacement for shipmate?
| Geisterde wrote:
| Just common english slang, bro, dude, whatevers on their
| nametag or a first name/nickname if they have one; nothing
| dissimilar to civilian life and I think thats largely the
| point, even last names are commonly referred to as "slave
| names". Formal speech is all ranks, "hey chief", "yes petty
| officer".
| christophilus wrote:
| The US south still uses ma'am and sir as polite forms of
| address, but it's also often used sarcastically (where the
| ma'am or sir is exaggerated: "Well, yes, MA'am!")
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| That seems to be true across the country (it's been the case
| everywhere I've been, at least).
| pavlov wrote:
| Interestingly the formality ladder flips at the very top of the
| hierarchy. Kings and popes must be addressed diffusely with
| plurals and layered references to official status ("Your
| Imperial Majesty"), but the Christian God above them is a
| "thou" in every European language.
|
| (Useless trivia bit... Apparently Emperor Charles V invented
| the styling of "His Majesty". Before him, kings and emperors
| were addressed as highnesses, but he wanted something fancier
| after being crowned as the Holy Roman Emperor in addition to
| the kingships he already held.)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| That's because the english notion of informal/formal is a
| poor fit for the modern, symmetric use of T-V.
|
| It's more of a social distance, with V-form for people
| outside the personal sphere, and T-form for people outside
| the public sphere.
|
| So, as an atheist, I'd use V-form* with the Christian God,
| but His Believers really ought to be using T-form with Him.
|
| * Si vous plait, j'aimerais bien savior comment fonctionne la
| turbulence ... mais ne vous inquietez pas si l'explication
| serait trop complique !
| umanwizard wrote:
| La turbulence ?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence#Kolmogorov's_the
| ory...
|
| see also https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg12416936-8
| 00-letter-la...
|
| (but the way I heard the joke is that the scientist has
| planned to ask Him how to resolve gravitation with
| quantum mechanics, and only then the bystanders inquire,
| why not ask about turbulence?)
| euroderf wrote:
| > Kings and popes must be addressed diffusely with plurals
|
| So I guess "the royal 'We'" falls under "believing your own
| marketing".
| rayiner wrote:
| That's fascinating. In Bangla, "thui" is the very informal
| second person pronoun (like what am older sibling would say to
| a younger sibling).
| selimthegrim wrote:
| See also https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/yeten#Middle_English
| (Etymology 2), where ye (and yeet[!]) were its descendants (to
| ye someone was a thing as well)
| pm215 wrote:
| There seems to be a certain amount of "euphemism treadmill" in
| Japanese pronouns, where they start off polite and drift
| downward in acceptability to be replaced by new ones. I have a
| grammar book from 1906 ("Hossfeld's Japanese Grammar") which
| effectively documents some of that drift: for second person
| pronouns, apparently you could still get away with "addressing
| inferiors familiarly" with 'kisama' in 1906, so it hadn't yet
| dropped to the insult level it has now. 'nushi' is also listed,
| glossed 'contemptuous', and I don't think anybody uses 'nushi'
| as an insult today. 'Anata' and 'omae' are the 1906 recommended
| pronouns.
| yongjik wrote:
| Korean also suffers from similar issues, where it's a bit
| more ridiculous: the textbook version of "polite" 2nd
| singular pronoun ("dangsin") has fallen so low that it's
| pretty much an insult now, and no other term has taken its
| place. As a result, modern Korean arguably does not have a
| polite 2nd person singular pronoun.
|
| We somehow make do - it helps that Korean allows just
| omitting pronoun when the context is clear (same as
| Japanese).
| cyphar wrote:
| Zhu (nushi) has wrapped back around to being more on the
| polite side, though I get the impression it's used more by
| older people. There's also phrases like Chi chiZhu (mochi-
| nushi -- person who is a holder of something) that have
| ossified the pronoun so it probably won't go away entirely
| for a while.
|
| I think the reason for the rotation of pronouns is because
| people start using them sarcastically which means it's no
| longer seen as respectful, and so new pronouns become
| necessary.
| ghaff wrote:
| The page also gets into the plural form being used for the
| singular over time (as is increasingly the case with English, at
| least in the US, when you want to avoid specifying a masculine or
| feminine third-person singular).
| yawaramin wrote:
| 'Thou' is also used in English prayers ('Thy kingdom come, thy
| will be done'), as a mark of a personal closeness to God.
| tom_ wrote:
| "You" would be ambiguous anyway, and might imply that you are
| addressing more than one, contravening the first commandment.
| dustincoates wrote:
| That's really more due to the influence of the King James
| Version than anything else. For example, ESV uses you:
| https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206%3A5...
|
| In French, however, God is always referred to with the informal
| tu, which surprises second language learners. But it makes
| sense when you realize that using plural for formal came about
| well after the Hebrew Bible, and because it was to implicitly
| refer to multiple people (sort of like the royal We), which
| obviously wouldn't be acceptable in Christianity.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Also informal in English (c.f. The use of thou in the Lord's
| Prayer)
| yawaramin wrote:
| It wouldn't surprise South Asian (e.g. Bengali) Muslims who
| grow up hearing clerics address God as 'tui' (informal 'you'
| like French 'tu').
| erutuon wrote:
| Good insight that I hadn't thought of. To flesh that out, the
| KJV translators used thou as singular and ye as plural
| consistently to render the second person singular-plural
| distinctions found in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The
| translators never intended a usage of thou in the KJV to
| imply informality, only that the original language used the
| second person singular. That would naturally carry over into
| prayers and hymns that don't come from the KJV Bible.
| However, common people at the time who couldn't know the
| translators' chosen convention might have then read closeness
| into the pronoun used to address God, which wouldn't be a bad
| thing theologically.
| dwheeler wrote:
| More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
|
| This should be common knowledge for native English speakers. It's
| hard to read Shakespeare without knowing this. But for non-native
| speaker, this would be mysterious.
| baxtr wrote:
| According to the article "you" was formal and "thou" informal.
| fsckboy wrote:
| from the spelling i assume they were pronounced the same, but
| hopefully they both rhymed with thou.
| o11c wrote:
| Note that "you" is actually the object form, so the table
| is unfortunately not arranged the obvious way:
| single plural used in contexts of thou ye
| nominative (subject), vocative (preceded by the word "O").
| For the singular, this implies that the relevant verb takes
| the "-[e]st" suffix. thee you all object
| forms (direct object, indirect object, object of
| preposition) thy your possessive determiner,
| before consonant sounds - thy will, thy God thine
| your possessive determiner, before vowel sounds
| (including 'h') - thine enemy, thine head thine
| yours possessive pronoun - not my will but thine, all
| that I have is thine
|
| (the last distinction used to by used for my/mine, and is
| still used for a/an)
| zirgs wrote:
| Yes - and this is how it is in a lot of other Indo-European
| languages too.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Or King James Bible - some Christians stick to the original
| translation (1611).
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| Why do you think the KJV is the "original translation"? As
| far as English translations of Scripture go, it was preceded
| by the Wycliffe Bible. And a translation of the Gospels was
| produced in the Old English era.
| biorach wrote:
| While technically true this is somewhat pedantic, the KJV
| was the first vernacular translation to be widely available
| in the English speaking world and is a hugely influential
| text for literary English, so just take "original" here in
| a metaphoric sense.
| o11c wrote:
| Everybody uses the 1769 update actually.
| majormajor wrote:
| "In the 17th century, thou fell into disuse in the standard
| language"
|
| Why would that need to be common knowledge 3-400 years later
| then?
| flappyeagle wrote:
| Because there are many still-popular and important literary
| works like those of Shakespeare and the King James Bible
| which benefit from understanding the distinction.
| panarky wrote:
| For most of my life I've quietly despised the people in the
| church of my youth for switching to thee/thou/thy in public
| prayers. I always thought this was grandstanding
| performance of piety, or cargo cult mumbo jumbo, or both.
|
| It just seemed so silly to think that God only understands
| archaic English.
|
| Now it turns out these people I despised were only being
| respectful, and trying to use the formal forms?
|
| However, since it seems that "thee" and "thou" were
| actually the _informal_ forms of "you" in 17th century
| English, now I'm really confused why they suddenly started
| talking this way the moment they crossed the threshold of
| the church.
| trealira wrote:
| > However, since it seems that "thee" and "thou" are the
| informal forms of "you", now I'm really confused why they
| do this.
|
| Unnecessary reverence of the King James Bible
| translation, probably.
| janandonly wrote:
| As far as I know, _you_ actually is the formal,
| originally plural version (ye /you/your) and thou was the
| informal version (thou/thee/thy/thine). Over time, thou
| became impolitely informal and is now no longer used,
| though interestingly enough, nowadays it might even be
| perceived as more formal than you because it's archaic
| and survives almost exclusively in liturgical language.
| dwheeler wrote:
| In Old English "thou" is singular, "you" is plural.
|
| As noted in Wikipedia:
|
| > As William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in
| the early 16th century, he preserved the singular and
| plural distinctions that he found in his Hebrew and Greek
| originals. He used thou for the singular and ye for the
| plural regardless of the relative status of the speaker
| and the addressee. Tyndale's usage was standard for the
| period and mirrored that found in the earlier Wycliffe's
| Bible and the later King James Bible.
|
| Later, presumably due to French influence, "thou" became
| informal and "you" formal.
|
| Finally "thou" was dropped from everyday speech, though
| it still shows up in various old phrases.
| ogogmad wrote:
| In ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek, there was no T/V
| distinction, so their equivalent of "thou" was never
| considered informal. Some Early Modern translators of the
| bible tried to preserve the thou/you distinction as it
| existed in ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek, while
| deliberately ignoring how it worked in the languages they
| were translating into. This then influenced the language
| of prayer.
|
| Another pattern is that religious language tends to be
| archaic. For example, Jews pray in ancient Hebrew,
| Muslims in classical Arabic, some Catholics in classical
| Latin, and so on. I don't know whether this is done to
| create a sense of awe and mystery, or because religions
| try to appear unchanging.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Shakespeare, Chaucer, Bronte, Cervantes etc. Unless youre
| suggesting knowledge of classic literature shouldnt be
| common?
| timeon wrote:
| > But for non-native speaker, this would be mysterious.
|
| As non-native speaker I had learned early that 'you' so I
| thought that there was probably some other form no longer used.
| neaden wrote:
| The Goblin Emperor by Sarah Monette (writing as Katherine
| Addison) is a secondary world fantasy that uses you/thou as a way
| of incorporating formality. It's interesting way of helping
| understand the whole manner/formality system of the setting.
| Semiapies wrote:
| Also the royal "we".
| delduca wrote:
| The same happened with Portuguese in Brazil, 'Vos Merces', which
| is formal, is used throughout the country as (simplified) 'voce'.
| And the informal form, 'tu', is rarely used (only in the South).
| simtel20 wrote:
| Oh, interesting, is vosmice a mispronouncing of vos merces too?
| delduca wrote:
| I believe so, and tuh (or thu, don't remember) linked in the
| article has the same sound
| mito88 wrote:
| vossa merce, vosmece, vossemece.
| mderazon wrote:
| In European Portuguese the two forms are still equally used
| samvoar wrote:
| >tu', is rarely used (only in the South)
|
| even in places and situations where 'tu' is used it's mostly
| still conjugated as if it were second person singular.
|
| 'EU BEM QUE TE AVISEI - TU EMPINOU ELE PEI'
| gugagore wrote:
| You mean it's conjugated like the third person singular, i.e.
| like voce or ele or "a coisa" (the thing).
| kawa wrote:
| "Thou" sounds very similar to german "du" which is the current
| informal form. In older german the second person plural ('Ihr',
| similar to "vous" french from which "you" may come) was also the
| formal form, but it's out of fashion for a few centuries now.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Indeed, it's the same word! In the ancestor language of both
| English and German (and also Dutch, Low German, and many
| others) it's been reconstructed as "thu".
| amelius wrote:
| What is the ancestor language, and how do you pronounce thu?
| pvg wrote:
| proto-West Germanic by current thinking (at least, by
| Wikipedia)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germanic_languages#Valid
| i...
| hinkley wrote:
| For flowery speech we escalate to sentence fragments. Your Grace,
| Your Eminence, Madam President, Your Honor. Or honorifics in
| front of or around proper names, like Mister Rogers, Doctor
| House, Nurse Ratched (anarchic now, the doctors have one that PR
| campaign) or "General Granger, Sir". There are some parliamentary
| ones that pretty much only show on in Congress and on CSPAN.
| biztos wrote:
| And my favorite one (in UK): Governor!
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| I think that one's used more ironically, now
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Yeah typically 'Guv. Or Guv'ner rather than governor.
| euroderf wrote:
| Let us not forget Grand Exalted Poobah.
| verditelabs wrote:
| In my native Texan English, "y'all" can certainly act as a
| singular polite "you" (EDIT: though it is not terribly common). I
| often use "Howdy, how y'all doin?" as a polite greeting to people
| I don't know regardless of the number of people I am addressing,
| though switch to just "you" after making acquaintance. Funny
| enough, "howdy" is a contraction of the older "how do ye" and
| some people still consider it both a greeting _and_ an inquiry,
| so in some cases it's redundant, and others it isn't, depending
| on the listener.
| lstamour wrote:
| That's interesting. As a non-Texan, I'd assumed that since
| y'all is a contraction that it would signify a more casual tone
| in the same way that "He'll" is less formal than "He will",
| etc.
| bxparks wrote:
| Wait, wat? I always thought that "y'all" was a contraction of
| "you all", so meant the "plural you" instead of the "singular
| you".
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I think you have to say "all y'all" for the plural.
| majormajor wrote:
| This Texan's understanding:
|
| "Y'all" = plural you
|
| "All y'all" = "all of [plural] you" as distinct from "some
| of you/y'all"
|
| Don't think I've ever heard a singular y'all. "How ya
| doin'" would be the singular version of "How y'all doin"
| verditelabs wrote:
| For me, "y'all" has multiple forms
|
| "y'all" - explicitly addressing >1 person
|
| "y'all" - explicitly addressing 1 person while implicitly
| addressing >1 people. I might say "how y'all doin" to a
| friend, implying "how are you and your family doing"
|
| "all y'all" - >>1 person or addressing >1 person that was
| not included in the previous "y'all"
|
| "y'all" - explicitly and implicitly addressing 1 person
| whom I have not made acquaintance with. If I were working
| as a server in a restaurant and had a single person come
| in, I may address them with "y'all". "What can I get
| y'all?" is the same as "what can I get you?" but the
| "y'all" gives it some extra politeness or an "emphatic
| southern accent"
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| This often comes up in such discussions, but no, both
| "y'all" and "all y'all" are plural. They're useful for
| distinguishing between smaller and larger groups. For
| instance, if a couple of members of a family are visiting,
| you could say "you" (the person you're speaking to),
| "y'all" (the whole group visiting), or "all y'all" (you and
| the rest of your family who aren't here). Or if multiple
| groups are visiting, "y'all" might be one group and "all
| y'all" might be everyone.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| It would hardly be the first time a second-person plural
| turned into a formal second-person singular...
| rightbyte wrote:
| There is always a slide.
|
| "You" implicitly means "thou and thine underlings" when used
| in singular. Which makes in polite.
|
| "y'all" will probably share the same fate in English.
| pruetj wrote:
| Interesting on the "y'all". I'm a Texan and have never
| addressed a singular person as y'all. If I do address a person
| as y'all as in "How are y'all doing?", it's assumed I'm
| speaking of the family unit that person belongs to rather than
| the individual.
|
| While we Texans might find it polite or friendly, in the
| corporate world I've been told to avoid using it in emails.
| verditelabs wrote:
| I think you're right about the implicit group/family aspect
| in many cases. If I'm taking to one friend and say "how are
| y'all doing" then that friend's family or ingroup is
| certainly implied in the question.
|
| The singular polite "y'all" I'm referring to is generally
| used when the other party is not known. F.ex. I regularly,
| though certainly not always, hear clerks, waiters, or other
| service industry workers using "y'all" singularly when asking
| "what can I get y'all to eat" or "y'all need anything else"
| when speaking to exactly one person, and I use it that way
| myself.
| pruetj wrote:
| Ah, got it. I know what you are referring to now. Yea, it
| is seen in hospitality more often.
| stavros wrote:
| Contrarily, I use it more and more in work contexts, as it's
| the most convenient second person plural you can use.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > it's assumed I'm speaking of the family unit that person
| belongs to rather than the individual.
|
| I think this is the formal singular "y'all" that people keep
| referring to. It can sometimes be short for "you and your
| family," which is why you would see it in greetings and
| goodbyes e.g. "How are y'all doing today" or "I hope to see
| y'all again soon."
|
| For signs of formality, it has the indirection of not
| addressing the person directly (like "your grace" "your
| honor" or "your mercy"), and is usually used as an stylized
| expression of concern. To my ear, "How was y'all's holidays?"
| sounds really professional, like how your lawyer would start
| a meeting.
| euroderf wrote:
| I'm from the Northeast and once in a while I'll use "y'all"
| as an informal plural. It tends to bring a smile to the
| people being addressed. Perhaps it is understood as a
| reference to its use in the movies.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| Y'all is a perfectly cromulent gender neutral way to address a
| group of people in a professional setting.
| lupusreal wrote:
| If you're not Southern and/or an AAVE speaker, then saying
| yall is cringe.
| lokar wrote:
| See also: yinz
| fanf2 wrote:
| Re. "howdy", in (somewhat old-fashioned) posh English speech,
| "how d'you do?" as a greeting is _not_ an enquiry: the
| idiomatic response is to say "how d'you do" in return. Weird.
| jmclnx wrote:
| And from another part of the country, we use "yous", though
| that has been fading too.
| jesprenj wrote:
| Slovene has three levels of politeness:
|
| * ti (second person singular)
|
| * vi (second person plural)
|
| * oni (third person plural) -- archaic
| timeon wrote:
| Same in Slovak (just first two are written with 'y' instead of
| 'i')
| oblio wrote:
| Romanian:
|
| * tu (second person singular, informal)
|
| * dumneata (second person singular, semi-formal)
|
| * dumneavoastra (second person plural, formal)
|
| "dumne" comes "domn" aka "sir".
| dkga wrote:
| It's just like Southwestern Brazilian Portuguese uses "voce" as
| the informal second person singular, while ironically the origin
| of this word is the formal version of this pronoun. Currently the
| formal second person singular is actually a third-person pronoun,
| "o senhor" or "a senhora" depending on the gender. Although there
| is incredible differences in how the formal/informal pronouns are
| applied: in my family we were taught to only use the informal
| with everybody no matter what, and in some of my friends'
| families the practice is to use the formal even when addressing
| one's parents.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| There must be some links between French and English where in
| French, the formal version is "vous" which sounds like "you" and
| the informal is "toi" which maybe sounded like "thou" in the
| past. (The 'th' has no equivalent in French)
| retrac wrote:
| Yes. The tu and thou pronouns are related. So are me and moi,
| nos and ours. In Hindi me and you are mai and tu. In Russian
| they are menya and tubya. (Sorry for errors in
| transliteration.). English I and Fench je are related too. Old
| English ich and Latin ego make the link more obvious.
|
| Pronouns tend to be some of the most fixed words in a language,
| up there with numbers and basic words like for "water" or
| "mother". They undergo sound change, and shifts like how
| English lost thou, but they are almost never replaced
| wholesale.
|
| All those languages are in fact descended from a common
| language spoken several thousand years ago. About half of the
| world today speaks a language in the Indo-European language
| family.
| nicole_express wrote:
| The English T-V distinction seems to have originated after the
| Norman Conquest, where French became the language of the
| aristocracy; wouldn't be surprised if that was exactly the
| source.
| rahen wrote:
| French and English coexisted as neighbor languages for more
| than a millenium, so there are a lot of both subtle and obvious
| similarities between the two.
| madhadron wrote:
| That's because they're very closely related languages. English
| is a mix of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French, after the Norman
| invasion of England in the 11th century. Norman French is how
| the Norse diaspora in Normandy mixed their Germanic tongue with
| the local dialects of Latin. And the Romance and Germanic
| languages are both pretty closely related branches of Indo-
| European, which is also a pretty narrow language family to
| start with. For example, 'tu' from French comes from mixing
| Norse 'du' with Latin 'tuus'...both of which come from deeper
| roots. Proto Indo-European reconstructs this as 'tuH'.
| erutuon wrote:
| There's no need to explain French tu by looking at Germanic
| languages. It descends pretty uneventfully from Latin tu.
| However, French and Latin tu are cousins of German du and
| English thou.
| ashton314 wrote:
| There's a part in Hamlet where Claudius (Hamlet's uncle, the one
| who killed Hamlet's father and married his mother Gertrude and
| became king) tells Gertrude, "go talk to _your_ son" after Hamlet
| angers him. Note that it's not "our son" or even "thy son"--the
| choice of "you" here is really biting once you know the
| distinction.
| slyall wrote:
| There is a scene in The Lord of the Rings (Book) where Eowyn
| switches to using "thou" and "thee" when begging Aragorn to take
| her with him when he takes the Paths of the Dead.
|
| If you don't know (as I didn't for a long time) that she has
| switched to intimate/informal language then the scene has less
| impact. Especially since Aragorn keeps things formal in his
| reply.
|
| http://coco.raceme.org/literature/lordoftherings/returnking/...
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Also see, the sun also rises because hemmingway transliterated
| a ton of Spanish, including thees, thous, some colloquialisms
| panarky wrote:
| You might be thinking of Hemingway's novelization of his
| experience supporting antifascists in the Spanish Civil War,
| "For Whom the Bell Tolls".
|
| He uses "thee" and "thou" to simulate the informal Spanish
| "tu".
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Yes. That is the one! Good to read both
| retrac wrote:
| This is a very common misinterpretation. A major factor behind
| such misinterpretation is probably the King James Bible. It
| heavily influences our sense of style even today. God is
| traditionally addressed with thou due to the intimate
| relationship, and today this is often misinterpreted as formal
| style. E.g.
|
| > Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and
| power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure
| they are and were created.
| entuno wrote:
| This is very noticeable in the Athrabeth, where Finrod switches
| between "you" and "thou" when talking to Andreth throughout the
| conversation.
|
| Tolkien also talks in Appendix F of The Return of the King
| about how hobbits had largely lost the distinction between
| "you" and "thou" - so when Pippin speaks to Denethor in Minas
| Tirith and addresses him with the familial term, people assume
| that he must be royalty himself to address the Steward in such
| an informal manner.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > must be royalty himself
|
| Technically I guess he was about as close to royalty as you
| can get in the Shire.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _Afterthought: the post below illustrates the paucity of modern
| English in that nowadays in modern English no distinction is made
| between the second and third person 'you' whereas in other
| languages such as German it still is._
|
| __
|
| I've mentioned on HN previously when discussing languages that
| when my father was learning German his old textbook had the
| English _thee, thou,_ and _thine /thy_ as the second person for
| the German second person _du._
|
| One of the faux pas for English speakers when learning German is
| the incorrect usage of _du._ They mistakenly use _du_ instead of
| _sie_ because it 's more informal than _sie_ not realizing that
| in German it is reserved for the closest of relationships such as
| family, lovers etc.
|
| Essentially, in German _du_ -- the equivalent form of the second
| person English _thou_ -- is still a part of the living language
| whereas in English _thou_ is now archaic.
|
| The correct usage of _du_ became immediately obvious to me after
| seeing my father 's textbook. For the life of me I cannot
| understand why modern English textbooks simply substitute _you_
| for _du,_ it 's just crazy as it leads to much confusion.
|
| _Thou_ and variants are understood by most native English
| speakers even if the term is now archaic so it makes sense to use
| it instead of _you_ in textbooks for learning German. Just one
| additional paragraph would be needed to explain and clean up the
| _you /du_ mess.
|
| I have been trying for years to find out why the authors of
| modern (current) textbooks now use _you_ instead of _thou._ I 'd
| be most grateful if someone who knows the rationale behind it
| would post the reason.
|
| Incidentally, my father's textbook was published sometime around
| 1930, so this _you_ substitution is a relatively recent
| phenomena.
| baxtr wrote:
| I've heard that "Sie Asshole" is the proper way to insult
| someone while staying polite.
| atoav wrote:
| "Sie Arschloch" is funny in that it highlights that one:
|
| 1. has enough manners to not call people you don't know "du"
| (and you are not letting emotionality override those manners)
|
| 2. yet you know that person well enough to judge their
| behaviour and call them out as an asshole
|
| It is a bit like punching someone with velvet gloves.
| biztos wrote:
| > it is reserved for the closest of relationships such as
| family, lovers etc.
|
| You use _du_ for your friends, your classmates, people your own
| age up through about college, and anyone you think you are or
| should be on informal terms with. Such as shop workers
| (sometimes), bartenders (usually), waiters (depending on
| location), random people in the street (in places like Berlin,
| if they 're not senior citizens), and anyone -- regardless of
| age or station -- who has said _du_ to you first, unless you
| want to very specifically snub them. You use _du_ with people
| you play Fussball against even if you 've never met them before
| and they're ten years older than you. Same with drinking. It
| would, perhaps counterintuitively, be rude to use _Sie_ in many
| social situations involving complete strangers. Unless they 're
| old.
|
| Then there is the ritual, rarely followed anymore, of actually
| formally suggesting that you and someone else -- usually a work
| colleague -- use _du_ with each other... and refusing that
| request is giving a very cold shoulder, there normally would
| not be another offer in one lifetime. (An "inferior" should
| not suggest it to his/her "superior," that would also be
| inappropriate.)
|
| _Du_ does enough work in German as she is spoke, I don 't
| think it makes sense for foreigners to learn the _Sie_ form
| before having proper facility with all the _du_ grammar. Given
| the immigration trends of the last 20 years, people will just
| be happy to hear German in the first place. Then learn to
| properly _siezen_ when you 're already conversational. My zwo
| Pfennig anyway.
| pvg wrote:
| I'll second just about all of this, the one bit of colour I
| can add - years ago I had a summer job in a German-speaking
| (auto) shop where a majority of the workers, including some
| of the management were immigrants with a fairly wide range of
| German proficiency but everyone had picked up the onsite
| du/Sie conventions (along with some others like shaking hands
| at the beginning of the shift). It's, like you're saying, as
| much a cultural convention with contextual intricacies as it
| is a grammatical feature of the language.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Right, see my reply to _biztos._
| pvg wrote:
| Funnily enough, my example was also from Vienna in the
| 90's, a specific place and time somewhat more, err,
| uptight about these things than I'd say today's
| conversational German on average.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _First, note my correction to the mistake in the above
| 'Afterthought'. Brain wasn't in gear._
|
| _
|
| Thanks for the info. My German is far from perfect so I don't
| claim any authority on the matter.
|
| Most of my time in a German-speaking environment was in
| Austria (Wien) and that was now some years ago. Back when I
| was learning the language it was always stressed to me not to
| use _du_ even with friends as it would be deemed as unwanted
| or excessive familiarity and could be taken as an offense.
|
| That said, from my limited experience there's are significant
| cultural differences between, say, Berlin and Wien with the
| latter being more formal and reserved (or it was so when I
| was living there two decades ago). Thus I find your
| observation interesting, so I'm now quite curious to see what
| cultural shifts if any have taken place in Wien since then.
|
| My first time there was in the early 1980s whilst Communism
| was still in place, so back then there was essentially no
| movement of people between Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc. and
| Austria. When I went back in the early 1990 and lived there
| at various times for about a decade I noticed a definite
| cultural shift which the locals put down to the movement of
| people from ex-communist counties such as Slovenia. However I
| can't say I noticed any shift in the language, but then
| that's not surprising as most people I worked or dealt with
| were better at English than I was in German.
|
| No doubt things have become more informal almost everywhere
| these days so I'm not surprised that there has been a shift
| in German usage just as there has been in English--even in my
| lifetime it's been very noticeable.
|
| English is a dog of language, it's slipshod, inconsistent and
| all over the place (it beats me how anyone who is not a
| native speaker ever learns it). The point I was making about
| _thou /du_ illustrates the problem with English quite well,
| English-speakers are notoriously bad at learning second
| languages so why make, say, learning German even more complex
| by not explaining actual parallels between the two languages?
| It seems no one cares much about the details these days.
|
| As an aside, in English _you_ goes for everything--friends,
| relatives, one 's dog, even inanimate objects. Thus it's
| interesting to note slang has picked up the cudgels and
| fought back with a colloquial use of the second person with
| _youse._ Many wince at this word and consider it uncouth and
| uneducated, but when one thinks about it, it makes sense when
| talking to a small group of friends. Seems funny really, we
| English speakers chucked out the perfectly good second-person
| (and respectable) word _thou_ and at least in some circles
| have replaced it with the uncouth _youse._ Clearly, modern
| English is missing something important by using _you_ for the
| singular and plural forms of the second person.
| euroderf wrote:
| What you say about "youse" - I find that "y'all" often fits
| the bill -- and/but with uncouthness upgraded to a hint of
| whimsy.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| For the second person plural, variations like "youns",
| "yous" and "yis" are used frequently in the informal speech
| of rural Northern Ireland. Though you risk being jeered and
| taken less seriously if these were spoken in a formal or
| business setting - it would give you a distinct rural
| twang.
|
| You may or may not consider these better than "youse",
| though I will say "yous" before "y'all" (quaint American
| import) regardless of context to the day I die.
| okeuro49 wrote:
| > English-speakers are notoriously bad at learning second
| languages
|
| My experience of learning German is that Germans would
| prefer to speak with you in English, as they want to
| practise their language skills with a native speaker.
|
| English speakers aren't bad at learning new languages,
| rather there is little incentive to do so, given everyone
| speaks or wants to speak English.
|
| Trying to speak a foreign language is sometimes met with
| confusion "why are you bothering to learn another language?
| Everyone speaks English" or downright hostility "if you're
| English just speak English".
| t8sr wrote:
| Interesting. I learned German in Switzerland and the only
| people who ever use sie are all over 50. Everyone you meet is
| addressed as du, except maybe in formal letters.
|
| I'm wondering if some weird looks I sometimes get in Germany
| might be because of that. Is "sie" used more commonly there?
| moffkalast wrote:
| "Sie hast" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I remember when I was learning German seriously I switched over
| software and websites to German... and felt very uncomfortable
| that facebook would always use 'du' with me. I'm guessing it's
| some marketing "oh we're so informal and cool" marketing wank
| talk, but it grossed me out.
|
| Not sure if any native German speakers that had that reaction.
| ruune wrote:
| E-Mails from big cooperations become increasingly "du".
| Sometimes it's still weird, but overall everyone got used to
| being on "du" basis with big faceless cooperations. I don't
| really notice anymore.
|
| That being said, I'm young enough to have not really
| experienced a time when it was unheard of to call someone you
| don't know really well "du". I'm only learning from this
| thread that it seems to be a fairly recent development.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Certainly, even in British English I remember when my bank
| moved from formal text messages to 'friendly' on the basis of
| a survey I never remember receiving.
|
| It is weird getting a balance update with "Hi" as the leader
| and emoticons throughout. We're not chums, just give me the
| news in the most emotionless manner possible.
|
| And don't get me started on the direction Microsoft went with
| Windows 10/11. "We're just getting things ready!" "Working on
| it..." "Something went wrong :(".... Eugh!
| stavros wrote:
| In contrast, in Spanish, they generally say "tu" rather than
| "usted", eg in restaurants, shops, etc. "Usted" is reserved for
| the more polite interactions, older people, etc.
| brational wrote:
| Totally depends on country.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" English no distinction is made between the second and third
| person 'you'."_
|
| Duh! I ought to read what I write before posing. Obviously what
| I said is garbage, what I meant was _'...in modern English no
| distinction is made between the second person singular and
| plural forms in that both use the pronoun 'you.'_
| huytersd wrote:
| "Tum" for you in Hindi when you're informal/talking to a peer.
| "Aap" for formal/elder/respected person.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Just looked it up. Looks like Tum comes from the same root as
| English "you". Guess a few millennia can do crazy things.
| mgaunard wrote:
| you is the formal version.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I'm from a country where there is a different version and I hate
| it because it makes me overthink every time about which one is
| appropriate to use now with people I don't know.
|
| Maybe I should completely ditch it, and use the informal one with
| everyone new, just with the hopes of building immediate rapport.
| I must not be the only one to hate it, and surely those people
| who would mind me using the informal one are not worth my time in
| the first place.
|
| Luckily we don't have gendered pronouns though, so we can avoid
| that problem altogether.
|
| I think in the end best and most scalable language is the one
| that avoids having any implications in the "you" or "pronouns".
| We are all humans after all.
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| If negotiating the _tu_ / _vous_ distinction takes major mental
| effort, are you on the spectrum? Difficulty with understanding
| social cues and (these distinctions are also about creating
| distance) other people's space is a typical trait of autism.
| These linguistic innovations wouldn 't spread - and often
| quickly, within a couple of generations - if the neurotypical
| masses found them burdensome.
|
| I'm in a country with this distinction, too, and I don't like
| strangers addressing me with the informal just like that. Every
| sociolinguistic setting is different, but using just the
| informal might not automatically create rapport but the
| opposite. Saying people like myself aren't worth your time
| sounds like sour grapes, and it might rob you of some
| opportunities.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I had a psychologist diagnose me, and I was almost on the
| spectrum according to the test (with points), but not quite
| to give me the diagnosis. Obviously the questionnaires are
| ambiguous with their questions enough to have so many
| different ways of interpreting the questions that to me makes
| many of those questions non-sensical in the first place. But
| actually, I have been to mental institutions multiple times,
| and in many cases the evaluators have mentioned "autistic
| tendencies". In the end - am I on the spectrum? I don't know,
| but I still would feel like I would benefit from it if I
| would just try to make a joke and then become warm and call
| them with the informal and singular "you" in my language. I
| hope it could show that we are all in this together.
| brnt wrote:
| In the Netherlands, it is very regional whether or not you
| use the polite form. In the capital region, it is not used,
| and use is a signifier you are from the countryside, if your
| accent wasn't enough. There are courses on how to get rid of
| your accent (or rather, get one of the capital region), and
| ceasing the employ of the polite form is featured.
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| I'm surprised to read this, inasmuch as when I briefly
| lived in Rotterdam (if "capital region" comprises it, too)
| some years ago, my local acquaintances coached me in where
| to use the formal, and where to use the informal, and the
| distinction seemed very much alive.
| brnt wrote:
| A Rotterdammer using the polite form is the Dutch
| equivalent of angels flying out of ones bumhole: I've
| never seen it.
|
| Joking aside: theres the school version of pioitesse, and
| the actual version.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Thats funny because in Austria it's the other way around.
| People in Vienna are used to being overpolite and will use
| the formal "Sie" abundantly, whereas on the countryside
| everyone is always almost "Du". There is the saying: "Am
| Land sind alle per Du".
| brnt wrote:
| It isn't difficult to see why. Vienna was an imperial
| capital, the Netherlands 'capital region' was ruled by
| (wealthy) capitalists. One group would be focused on
| courtesy, the other on efficiency, wouldn't they?
|
| Naturally, both are ultimately evolved into appearance,
| not substance (because of courae this difference isnt
| substantial).
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > If negotiating the tu/vous distinction takes major mental
| effort, are you on the spectrum
|
| For me it's the fact that these days it's very inconsistent.
| The "rules" were pretty clear 20-30+ years ago. Now it's a
| bit of a mess and there is a lot of overlap.
|
| > Saying people like myself aren't worth your time sounds
| like sour grapes
|
| I mean.. you're somebody who just claimed that a random
| person is autistic because he doesn't conform with some
| social norm you find to be somehow extremely important
| (specifically) in your environment. So it might not be such a
| bad heuristic.
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| I didn't claim that the person was autistic, I asked. And I
| asked because the way he described his difficulty is
| precisely what can finds in the literature on autism and
| sociolinguistics. And as you can see, I wasn't far off the
| mark. I also specifically said that the rules of my
| environment might not apply to his.
| em-bee wrote:
| indeed inconsistency is the problem. using the informal
| among colleagues at work, and especially with superiors is
| often the sign of a more relaxed work atmosphere, which is
| something people want and is thus becoming more common.
| especially in international companies where multiple
| languages are used.
|
| there is never a question what to use when i am talking to
| cashiers, clerks, etc. but when i am at a tech meetup or an
| informal gathering of people from different companies then
| the way to address people is very much in question. you
| never know how people like to be addressed. and while using
| the formal option may seem like the safe choice, it really
| isn't because it forces others to be formal with me too,
| and when i am the only one doing that it puts me into an
| odd position. the only safe option is to avoid any choice
| until the other makes their choice.
| blowski wrote:
| > it makes me overthink every time about which one is
| appropriate to use now with people I don't know
|
| The issue still comes up, but in different ways. To a friend I
| might say "Where's the nearest cashpoint?", but to a stranger
| I'd say "Excuse me, but would you happen to know where I could
| find the nearest cashpoint, please".
| netsharc wrote:
| German also has the 2 levels, but addressing the police with
| the informal you might get you into trouble. There's a great
| clip (not sure if it's a sketch show or a 360p mobile phone
| recording) of a guy peeking out of his apartment door and
| seeing a lot of coos, and he says to one of them, "Piss off,
| you (informal) asshole!." . The cop says "excuse me?", and the
| guy responds with, "Ah, sorry, you (formal) asshole!". The next
| bit is the cop kicking down the door... maybe it was one of
| those Cops-style reality shows.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| That's funny. But yeah, if someone has an authority over me
| like that, I wouldn't ever dare. It's mostly a question I
| guess when speaking to people I'm doing business/service
| with.
| Aaronmacaron wrote:
| asshole is a very euphemistic translation
| derriz wrote:
| Could you explain. I'd guess "Arschloch"?
|
| The translation of "bad language" is very tricky.
|
| English is my mother tongue but I live in a German (sort-
| of, it's complicated) speaking country. I've learned that
| "scheisse" is not a very good translation for the English
| word "sh*t". It seems to me that the English word is much
| stronger/more offensive than the common German translation
| at least where I'm from.
|
| German "scheisse" seems more at the level of "damn" in my
| experience (maybe it varies according to region?) and so is
| acceptable to be used in many more situations than the
| common English translation - i.e. by young kids or with
| strangers.
|
| I think German speakers, as a result, don't realize how
| strong the English word is and use it a bit more liberally
| than would be expected. For example, I was very surprised
| that broadsheet (respectable) newspapers will casually drop
| an expression like "sh*tstorm" into a German sentence in a
| serious article.
| Aaronmacaron wrote:
| The word in question is "wichser". The dictionary says it
| means "motherfucker". In my perception wichser is one of
| the strongest insults in german.
|
| https://youtu.be/S1ZnpYEsUNs?si=nGr-2MgtBMR16dgl
| trelane wrote:
| "wichser" is like "wanker." Someone who engages in, shall
| we say, self-Stimulation. I don't think it's nearly as
| offensive as other words.
| netsharc wrote:
| Damn, my memory of the video is totally wrong...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Words change roles, and shit is a very good contemporary
| example. Among my children's generation (mid-20s to
| mid-30s) it is now just as much as stand-in for "stuff"
| as it is an expression of anger or insult. "Where am I
| going to put all this shit?" does still carry a hint of a
| negative tone (directed towards the stuff), but barely
| any.
| em-bee wrote:
| ismo explains shit:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igh9iO5BxBo
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| he's wrong that "shit" is the most complicated word in
| english. That would be "jawn" - an adjective, noun, verb
| and more all in one little 4-letter package, which is
| also true of "shit", except that nobody not raised in
| Philadelphia knows the true scope of "jawn".
| em-bee wrote:
| well i look forward to when ismo gets to philadelpia and
| learns about "yawn". i expect he'll start out saying
| something like "i thought when i learned about the word
| shit, it was the most complicated word in english, but i
| turns out i still didn't know shit ..."
| alluro2 wrote:
| Ismo is the shit :)
| lostlogin wrote:
| > It seems to me that the English word is much
| stronger/more offensive than the common German
| translation at least where I'm from.
|
| This must vary hugely from place to place.
|
| I've know people here (builders and Australians) to use
| 'c*t' as a sort of endearment, and there aren't a ton of
| scenarios where 'shit' would cause anyone problems.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I got my phd in Communication and when I taught interpersonal
| communication, one of the articles we would have students read
| had an example of an American who was in Austria for a year or
| two. He was at a party talking to an Austrian friend when the
| Austrian's girlfriend came over. She stared using the informal
| "you." Later he asked her why she had decided to use the
| informal and she said, "I don't know. I just did it. You were
| talking with my boyfriend so I assumed I was on the same level
| as him."
| https://www.google.com/books/edition/Language_Shock/xOE4nPuW...
| mderazon wrote:
| Wouldn't you always need to think a little on how to engage
| with formal vs informal even if the language didn't have it
| built in ? I wouldn't address a child the same as a stranger or
| a boss even in English
| wmil wrote:
| These days, thanks to streamers, some of the young'uns have
| started using "chat" as a fourth person plural pronoun.
| easton wrote:
| Maybe I'm getting old, but I don't understand how you could use
| chat in real life without it being a joke.
|
| (Or maybe I'm being whooshed)
| shafyy wrote:
| Also interesting: Apparently, "they" started being used as
| singular long "you" for singular: https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/wordplay/singular-nonbinary-...
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Did English ever have a formal version of "you"?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7215834 - Feb 2014 (193
| comments)
| snidane wrote:
| As someone coming from a culture with T-V distinction [1], I
| always wished we dropped one of the branches like English did in
| the past.
|
| The informal T vs formal V causes confusion in conversation with
| semi-strangers. Eg. At work you never really know which way to
| speak to someone at a watercooler. If you choose the informal T
| you make them your equal. Ehich might be perceived as insulting
| to them, since they might want to keep a perception of
| superiority to you for eg. being older, more tenured, etc. Often
| you'd rather choose not to even engage in a conversation and just
| keep your thoughts to yourself. Better than ending up in a
| inferior position when choosing the safe V, or risking insulting
| someone when using the informal T form.
|
| This felt to me like one of the reasons why English became the
| dominant language for business over time. Together with
| simplified morphology (you only need to learn the plural by
| adding 's' at the end, vs. 5+ other tenses of each word) it just
| ended up being much easier to pick up and less risky to engage in
| conversations and therefore higher chances of adoption by non-
| speakers.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| English became the dominant business language for reasons
| unrelated to the English language itself but because of the
| relative power of the people who spoke the language.
| softfalcon wrote:
| Yeah, I feel like people forget about that whole British
| Imperialism thing too easily.
|
| We all speak English because at one point the English
| practically owned the entire planet.
| peyton wrote:
| The competition was very aggressive, escalating into
| several Anglo-Dutch wars. The VOC absolutely outcompeted
| the EIC most of the time. How do you explain the staying
| power of English given that "imperialism" is the more
| appropriate context, not "British Imperialism"?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_colonial_empire#/medi
| a/F...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire#/media/File:
| The...
| Aicy wrote:
| The Dutch and Portuguese outcompeted the British, until
| they didn't.
|
| In the 19th and early 20th century the British owned the
| seas, a post 1945 another English speaking country has -
| the United States.
| F3nd0 wrote:
| Compare English with Esperanto, which, in spite of being
| _much_ easier to learn than English, still hasn 't become
| anywhere near as widespread (at least in terms of number of
| speakers).
|
| Ironically the one biggest thing which presents an
| ideological advantage for Esperanto is that it's native to
| no nation, so all the people who speak it are closer to
| being equals in that regard; yet it is the imperialism and
| a large number of native speakers which has helped to make
| English so prevalent. So just being technically and morally
| superior doesn't win you adoption by a long shot, even if
| you try.
|
| And it may be of note for this post that the original
| author of Esperanto was very conscious of this whole
| formal/informal issue, which is why he opted to introduce
| only the plural second person pronoun into practice.
| batch12 wrote:
| English is neither morally superior nor morally inferior
| to Esperanto.
| F3nd0 wrote:
| In general? No, of course not; I feel that would be an
| absurd claim to make.
|
| But as an international language? I think having everyone
| learn something that is comparatively easy to learn is
| certainly more fair than having most people learn
| something that is comparatively hard to learn and
| understood by others from the get-go, thereby giving the
| latter an unfair advantage. And I feel that being more
| fair in this regard is indeed morally superior.
|
| (Then again, that might just boil down to one's own idea
| of morality. But I feel like this one shouldn't be all
| too uncommon, and the claim is entirely reasonable in its
| terms.)
| rep_lodsb wrote:
| Esperanto may not be native to any nation, but as far as
| I'm aware, it's heavily influenced by Latin and various
| European languages.
|
| Not saying that this is it's main problem, and other
| constructed languages like Lojban are probably even less
| relevant despite trying to be more "culturally neutral".
| F3nd0 wrote:
| Yes, you are entirely correct. Making a language that's
| fully 'culturally neutral' is likely impossible, but even
| so, Esperanto could have done much better in this regard
| (and as far as I know, some other constructed languages
| _do_ much better in this regard).
|
| Even then, it's a very big jump from 'people in some
| countries already know this and don't need to learn at
| all' to 'people in some countries will have an easier
| time learning since they'll recognise a lot of the
| words'; making this jump would already be a great
| improvement upon the status quo. Out of the languages
| which make the jump, Esperanto is by far the most widely
| spoken and otherwise used in practice.
| 8372049 wrote:
| That's not universally true. In my country, German was the
| widely accepted and taught second language until WW2. Since
| then it's been English.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Well one empire (sort of empire) defeated another, so
| it's related.
| 8372049 wrote:
| The reason German(y) was widely unpopular after WW2
| wasn't primarily because they lost.
|
| ETA: They lost WW1 too, but German remained our #1
| foreign language.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| OTOH, the reason those feelings were free to be
| expressed...
| 8372049 wrote:
| Yeah, we would all be speaking German now if they had
| won. But to put it another way, German remained the
| second language after they lost WW1.
| Aicy wrote:
| The relative power of German speakers (Germany) dropped
| massively after WW2 compared to English speakers (USA).
| OJFord wrote:
| How is that not essentially the same point? The second
| language was determined by international politics, not
| linguistic merit.
| 8372049 wrote:
| Depends on your level of abstraction, I guess. GP stated
| "We all speak English because at one point the English
| practically owned the entire planet."
|
| Which in our case is false. We stopped learning German as
| a second language because of the Nazi aggression and
| atrocities during WW2, and started learning English as a
| second language due to their aid and closer relations
| during the war.
|
| But yes, it's obviously not because of any linguistic
| merit.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| It would help if we knew which country. Was this due to
| (1) pre-WW2 German language mostly useful for trade with
| Germany, or (2) a significant minority of ethnic Germans,
| who probably returned to Germany (E/W) after WW2? My
| guess: #2.
| 8372049 wrote:
| Norway. Just overall friendlier standing with Germany
| than the UK pre-WW2 I think.
|
| No significant minority of ethnic Germans, and I think
| trade with Germany and the UK was roughly comparable.
| rblatz wrote:
| That's true of many countries, including The US.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| It is a bit more complex than that. My father (American)
| learned German because his mother considered it "the
| language of science". That attitude is mostly gone.
| skissane wrote:
| > It is a bit more complex than that. My father
| (American) learned German because his mother considered
| it "the language of science". That attitude is mostly
| gone.
|
| When my dad did his chemistry degrees (a bachelors and a
| masters by research) in the late 1960s / early 1970s
| (Australia), they made him do a unit on how to read
| German, because that is the language of a lot of the
| older chemistry literature. I don't think they care
| anywhere near as much about German in chemistry nowadays,
| although (from what I understand) learning to read German
| is still an expectation for some humanities PhDs (such as
| Egyptology)
| sib wrote:
| When I studied computer science (which, at my university
| in the United States was still a part of the mathematics
| faculty), we were required to study one of German,
| French, or Russian, as those were historical languages of
| math.
|
| Seems a bit quaint now - but at least it got me to learn
| German and even spend six months studying at the
| University of Heidelberg.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Yes. But then the English language got a _lot_ of reps as the
| lingua franca of commerce and science.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| English became the lingua franca of science because of the
| decline of German science following the world wars. English
| became the language of commerce due to the commercial
| dominance of first the British Empire and then the United
| States.
|
| So still not really due to some intrinsic merits of the
| language.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| The anglos won the world wars due to the intrinsic merits
| of english, not only because war itself requires
| communication, but also because they were able to
| mobilize more resources, including the resources of a
| country full of recent immigrants, who had all already
| learned english.
| somethingsaid wrote:
| But English was dominant because the people who were
| dominant in those areas spoke English. It's because of
| that previous dominance that the allies (you forgot the
| Soviet Union, China, the Netherlands, and France among
| others btw) were able to build on that dominance and
| succeed. Their success built into the post-war growth of
| English and the US, as they were undamaged and recovered
| quickly. So I would say that English is dominant because
| of the back to back successes of English speaking
| countries, not that their success is because of English.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Oh, I'm sorry for forgetting the Netherlands, among
| others.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| I'm not saying it deserved to be. I'm saying it has been
| for a while, and has accumulated advantages over time
| given that privilege
| irrational wrote:
| Don't forget about Hollywood and the dominance of English-
| speaking media. And English has been the lingua franca of
| the Internet. I travelled a bit before the mid 90s and not
| as many people spoke English in many places as do today.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| The english people became powerful because english is such a
| good language.
| bombcar wrote:
| The wane of the British empire and the waxing of the
| American one coincides with them dropping the English
| measurements for metric.
|
| It's not coincidence, it's _causal_ :D
| moffkalast wrote:
| I would imagine it was more because of the
| island/shipbuilding supremacy thing.
| dashtiarian wrote:
| Is speaking to someone formally considered ending up in an
| inferior position in all cultures?
|
| In Persian if someone expects to be spoken with formally, they
| have to speak formally themselves. So when you speak formally
| you're kinda bringing both parties up. You can even flirt by
| speaking formally.
| blowski wrote:
| How does the "flirting by speaking formally" work? "I say,
| does Madam visit this establishment frequently".
| coldtea wrote:
| Yes, but imagine it not sounding funny like in the English
| case, because it's a normal feature of the
| language/culture...
| blowski wrote:
| Is it because of cultural expectations in how men and
| women should address each other? Does the formal language
| get used for properly formal situations as well? Is there
| a whole set of specific terms for this?
|
| Sorry for all the questions. I just found it fascinating.
| coldtea wrote:
| Not sure about the specifics for Iran in particular (the
| grandparent can answer), I've just heard about that from
| some friends hailing from there.
|
| But I could relate it, as it was a "chic" thing to do in
| my parts too back in the day (until around the 1970s),
| for upper class folks (using the polite forms of address,
| and so on).
|
| A good analogy in English terms might be the flirting
| with all the speaking formalities in period movies live
| "Room with a view" or "Pride and Prejudice".
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| FYI: Large parts of Afghanistan and Tajikistan also speak
| Persian. I was surprised to learn this recently.
| pySSK wrote:
| It's a nice gesture kinda like holding the door open for
| you date.
| dashtiarian wrote:
| Different cultures. Persian has 1100 years of literature
| and recent media for this.
|
| On the other hand you can't dirty talk with a straight face
| in Persian, since nobody has ever heard or read about it,
| it sounds super funny.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I admit I know barely anything about the subject (but I
| took an interest in Burton as a younger man): is The
| Perfumed Garden not "dirty", ie erotic literature?
|
| I recall the One-Thousand-and-One Nights being quite
| bawdy (talking about lusting after well-endowed servants,
| IIRC); maybe that's not authentic Persian literature
| though?
|
| Maybe I misunderstood "nobody has ever read or heard
| about it"?
|
| Can you help me better understand your comment, thanks.
| dashtiarian wrote:
| The current 1001 nights is Arabic and the Middle Persian
| one is lost. Nevertheless, it is a pre-islamic
| literature. Perfumed Garden is Arabic and has just been
| recently translated into Persian.
|
| New Persian literature starts around Rudaki (9th
| century). Since Islam made sex and showing affection
| taboo, the tiny fraction of explicit erotica are not
| studied/known by the general public. Because of the
| taboo, majority of Persians have not ever heard their
| parents speak affectionately. And when we study
| affectionate literature in school the teachers tell us
| it's about the love for God, and the exams will question
| us about such love.
| rzzzt wrote:
| M'lady
| grishka wrote:
| In Russian you can sometimes jokingly call someone like a
| friend or a partner "vy" + their first and middle
| (father's) name. It makes you sound kinda important.
| globular-toast wrote:
| _Voulez-vous couchez avec moi_ ?
| timeagain wrote:
| Well inferior might be overly simplistic. In many cultures
| you use formal speech with strangers as well.
| andrepd wrote:
| The Wikipedia article linked lists several types of T-V
| distinctions. Some are based on age, others on age
| difference, social status, and many more subtle factors. They
| also change very quickly: my parents speak to their parents
| with V but I do with T.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| In Spanish asymmetric conversations have always been a thing,
| e.g. student-teacher, patient-doctor or younger-older
| conversations where the former side uses V and the latter T.
|
| The V is gradually being dropped in Spain and in the last few
| decades the process seems to have accelerated, though,
| definitely it seems faster than in French (although I don't
| know that much about French). I don't think my 4-year-old son
| will have much use for the V in his life. And like your
| parent comment, I also think that's probably for the best in
| our case, although it does sound like it's probably different
| in Persian.
| shaky-carrousel wrote:
| I always start formal (except with kids), and if the other
| part switches to informal, then I switch too.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Growing up in the south it was all yes sir no sir yes
| ma'am no ma'am
| devilbunny wrote:
| And in many ways still is, especially for kids, but
| Southern English also has mechanisms for expressing
| familiarity and respect at the same time - it was in no
| way unusual for us to call friends' parents by their
| first name, provided we prefixed it with "Mr/Miss"
| (always Miss, for some reason, even if an obviously
| married woman).
| ramses0 wrote:
| It's considered "polite" to imply that the woman in
| question is obviously still an unmarried hottie, which is
| why you always "err on the side of Miss", rather than
| "mistake on the side of Mrs."
| devilbunny wrote:
| In a general sense yes, but when you're talking about
| your friend's mom...
| asveikau wrote:
| Spanish has lots of funky history in its second person
| pronouns that vary regionally. After Argentina's recent
| election I've been consuming lots of content from there,
| and it sometimes surprises me how frequently they use _vos_
| in things that would seem to call for politeness. _Vos_
| itself was formal address in Spain in the time of Cervantes
| IIRC, it is also the origin of _vuestro merced_ ( _usted_ )
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > After Argentina's recent election I've been consuming
| lots of content from there, and it sometimes surprises me
| how frequently they use vos in things that would seem to
| call for politeness. Vos itself was formal address in
| Spain in the time of Cervantes IIRC, it is also the
| origin of vuestro merced (usted)
|
| _vos_ is not really formal in Argentinian Spanish,
| although it does share an etymologocal root with _vuestro
| merced_ / _Usted_.
|
| Argentinian Spanish is itself pretty different from other
| Latin American dialects, but in general _vos_ is used
| interchangeably with _tu_ , to the point where the
| accusative form of "vos" is also _te_ - ie, "Vos te
| levantas" instead of "tu te levantas" (note the location
| of the accents in each example).
|
| The connotations of formality (or lack thereof) are
| subtle and vary much more widely than you might imagine -
| far more than the comment limit on HN would permit - but
| by and large it's better to think of _vos_ as the
| informal pronoun, and the only question is whether it 's
| used alongside _tu_ , in place of it, or in some weird
| combination that has its own subtle connotations.
| asveikau wrote:
| I know this. What I'm saying is I'm surprised at people
| using vos where usted seems kind of necessary to me. What
| I also said is that vos was formal 500 years ago, which
| is an unrelated observation.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Vos is informal, Usted is formal. That's it. We don't use
| "Tu" AFAIK.
| totallywrong wrote:
| And that depends on the country as well. In Colombia
| usted can be formal or not, as in parents using it with
| their children, or among friends, where supposedly tu or
| vos would be more appropriate.
| rodric wrote:
| > The V is gradually being dropped in Spain and in the last
| few decades the process seems to have accelerated
|
| I own a Spanish textbook printed (in English) in 1958 that
| says about <<usted>>: 'It is the universal respectful
| address of society, and the only one the foreigner is ever
| likely to employ or hear addressed to him, unless he
| marries a native or forms intimate friendships.' How times
| have changed!
| elboru wrote:
| Not in mine. But you surely build a barrier of "respect", I
| learned that early in my career. I was too formal and "too
| respectful", that built a barrier with many people, a barrier
| other teammates didn't have. That barrier can be useful
| though, but you need to be aware of it.
| api wrote:
| That actually sounds really cool.
| yongjik wrote:
| In Korean there are four commonly used forms, which map into
| the combination of (formal vs informal) x (polite vs not-so-
| polite). (That's a simple picture and the reality is a lot
| messier... but let's not get into that.)
|
| E.g.,
|
| Formal polite: military, business email, public announcement
|
| Formal non-polite: textbooks, novels
|
| Informal polite: kids' books, between coworkers, between
| customer and clerk
|
| Informal non-polite: siblings, childhood friends, mom to kids
| BalinKing wrote:
| This sounds very similar to my (very amateur) understanding
| of how Japanese works as well.
| abtinf wrote:
| Formal Farsi borders on being its own dialect. I grew up only
| learning informal "street" Farsi, and find formal Farsi to be
| almost impenetrable (granted I've never tried to learn it).
| whycome wrote:
| Quebec French seems to be in the process of dropping the
| formal. It's way less common there than metro/france French.
| Joblo62 wrote:
| This so untrue I had to make an account to reply to you.
|
| Quebec french is standardised by the OQLF (Office Quebecois
| de la Langue Francaise) and the formal/informal distinction
| is as important in our french as it is in other cultures. The
| reason it might seem less common is because most
| conversations people have are informal. In formal settings,
| it is still expected of people to use "vous" rather than
| "tu". It is seen as polite and some people might even take
| offence to the informal being used when they do not know
| their interlocutor personally.
|
| I don't know where you got that from.
| Tommstein wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they were talking about their impression of
| trends regarding how people actually talk, not how some
| literal language lawyers demand they speak. Whether they're
| actually correct or not, I have no idea and it's beside the
| point.
| whycome wrote:
| Which part is untrue?
|
| In spoken French, in cases of unfamiliarity it would be
| more common in France to use the formal "vous" than in a
| place like Montreal where you'll see "tu" still used.
|
| When I say it "seems to be in the process" it's because of
| how I've heard the language spoken. (Admittedly in Montreal
| and French Ontario and not other parts of Quebec).
|
| Popular French (from France!) YouTuber Loic Suberville
| actually notes this difference in a video a couple weeks
| ago (jump to 1:25 ish).
|
| It's something he noticed as a "metro French" speaker. And
| he's made a career now out of looking at the absurdities of
| spoken language.
|
| (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PzNHyk2JAas&t=83s)
|
| Yes there is an official "language board" but that's
| aspirational and not a law. Language is a reflection of how
| people use it.
|
| I agree that in a formal conversation people will use
| "vous" (and we see similar splits of language in English
| "on the news" vs what people actually use), but there's way
| less use of "vous" in Quebec for a lot of situations.
| Sytten wrote:
| The part where you say we are dropping it. It is very
| much alive and just as confusing as ever for settings
| that are on the fence. I positively hate it. I can't
| count the number of times where I heard (roughly): Can I
| continue speaking with you using "tu"?
|
| When I was in high school (10y ago) we were forced to use
| "vous" when speaking to an adult.
|
| That is why OP said your statement was false.
| whycome wrote:
| > The part where you say we are dropping it.
|
| Not quite what I said.
|
| > That is why OP said your statement was false.
|
| There's something ironic here when the nuance of language
| is lost. Saying something "seems" a certain way is a
| personal observation. "It seems colder in this room"
| isn't a false statement if the room is measured and it
| wasn't actually colder.
|
| > Quebec French seems to be in the process of dropping
| the formal.
|
| I stand by it. It's an observation from speaking to
| people. They use 'vous' much less. And it's a comment on
| the process -- the shift.
|
| > I positively hate it. I can't count the number of times
| where I heard (roughly): Can I continue speaking with you
| using "tu"?
|
| I think you're agreeing with me? If situations where the
| question of whether or not the "formal" is required is
| becoming less and less inherently obvious, then that's an
| indicator of the shift. People want to use the
| comfortable form.
|
| > When I was in high school (10y ago) we were forced to
| use "vous" when speaking to an adult.
|
| Do you think that younger persons use the form "vous"
| less and less? Or do you think that they use it just as
| much as your age group? That's literally the "process" of
| language -- the younger dictate the rules. Language
| shifts. And I suspect the high school curriculum is an
| attempt to 'standardise' and for the 'proper' ways -- but
| things like the internet and casual speak will work
| against it. And formal forms may get relegated to
| professional situations. And, contrary to the poster that
| said it can seem impolite, I'd argue that one can see the
| use of the 'formal' forms as "stuck up".
|
| > It's way less common there than metro/france French.
|
| I think this is actually the statement that could be
| empirically analyzed if desired. I'm basing it on what
| metropolitan French speakers say about Quebec French. (eg
| in the language video).
|
| And since we're talking about "observations of the
| language" the anecdotes there may be useful.
|
| I noticed a comment that criticized the assertion
| regarding tu/vous: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzNHy
| k2JAas&lc=UgzgxoXEIhDXa...) "Wow je suis honnetement
| surpris par la fidelite de cette video! Malgre quelques
| erreurs (notamment qu'on utilise aussi le vous pour
| parler aux inconnus et parfois meme a ses parents/grand-
| parents, et que tous les Canadiens Francais ne sont pas
| Quebecois) tout est veridique, bravo! En plus c'etait
| tres divertissant de voir ma culture exposee par un
| representant Francais qui a fait ses recherches. Il
| faudrait juste revoir l'imitation de l'accent"
|
| A response: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzNHyk2JAas&
| lc=UgzgxoXEIhDXa...) "Va en France et tu vas voir que le
| "vous" est beaucoup plus present qu'ici. Le vouvoiement
| est quasi institutionalise la-bas alors qu'ici c'est un
| peu laisse chacun pour soi"
|
| And a response to that: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
| PzNHyk2JAas&lc=UgzgxoXEIhDXa...) "En effet, cela depend
| beaucoup de la generation et de l'education de chacun.
| Les jeunes ont tendance a tutoyer davantage que les plus
| ages. Mes parents (nes dans les annees 1920) vouvoyaient
| leurs parents qui eux se vouvoyaient entre eux. Ma
| generation (annee 60) va tutoyer plus souvent. Je tutoie
| les plus jeunes mais je vouvoie les plus vieux. Dans les
| ecoles, souvent a l'ecole primaire les enfants apprennent
| a tutoyer leurs enseignants. Au secondaire, le vous est
| habituellement de rigueur. Je suis commis dans un magasin
| et je vouvoie les clients jeunes ou vieux. Avant d'etre
| commis, j'etais enseignant... maintenant a la retraite.
| Les jeunes nous approchent souvent en tutoyant... cela me
| derange beaucoup. De meme, quand je suis client et qu'un
| commis me tutoie ca m'enerve."
|
| They essentially say that they observe it being used less
| and less for younger people. That's my observation as
| well.
|
| So yes, it does seem to me like quebec french is in the
| process of dropping it. The reduction in usage and
| relegation to certain settings will be a part of that
| process. I don't think the "official" language boards get
| to decide.
|
| We can check back in ...50 years or so?
| jampekka wrote:
| In Finnish the formal (second person plural) is almost gone.
| It's mostly in ceremonial use, or used as a quirk. In Swedish
| the formal is even more extinct and there was an active
| campaign to eradicate it in the 1970s.
|
| I very much welcome this development.
| andrepd wrote:
| T-V culture is speaking for years in periphrases and passive
| tense to a semi-acquaintance when you're not sure which form to
| use and too much time has passed that it's now awkward to ask.
| jmac01 wrote:
| Is it culturally English speaking to think this just sounds
| like social anxiety rather than an expected norm? If someone
| thought they were superior than me and expected a particular
| greeting or whatever, I'd tell them where to shove it lol
|
| We are all equal.
| ozim wrote:
| Yeah until you have mortgage to pay, kids and asshole on
| receiving end can influence your job security then it quickly
| turns out who is ,,more equal".
| Longhanks wrote:
| This is very ignorant towards many cultures and such behavior
| would be actively harming your career in most places I've got
| to know. You're lucky to be in a place where your lack of
| empathy towards local etiquette does not result in more peer
| pressure, for better or for worse.
|
| We are not equal.
| the_omegist wrote:
| No idea why you are being downvoted. I think people in some
| circles and some places hold strongly to their newly
| crafted dogmas.
|
| No one is equal to no one. I do not see how this can be
| taken badly at all : absence of equality does not equate to
| lack of intrinsic merit.
|
| As to the main topic : I think some degree of deference to
| some people, represented by some specific words, is a good
| thing, as long as it does not fall into some Byzantine
| rules that make communication less efficient.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| In english workplaces there's still a "heirarchy" it's just
| not expressed with that one specific word.
|
| If you'd phrase an email differently to a high-level exec vs
| your coworker, you've experienced it. Same with dressing
| differently to meet a new client vs an old friendly one. Both
| cases where you'd probably use the formal and informal
| depending on who you're talking to.
| yongjik wrote:
| If you take a complicated social issue and reduce it until it
| becomes a one-dimensional question, of course it sounds
| stupid.
|
| Imagine a foreigner learning English and asking "Why do I
| have to care if people are male or female? What a sexist
| language! Nobody cares about genitals in my culture!" And
| they start to refer to everybody as "he", regardless of,
| well, genitals.
|
| They won't come across as more enlightened, transcending the
| shackles of sexist English grammar.
|
| They will simply sound like a poor English speaker.
| McBeige wrote:
| It's besides the point, but a slight correction: you
| wouldn't assume someone's preferred pronouns from details
| about their genitals (it'd be offensive to ask or try to
| check!), but from how they present them self - through
| gendered appearance or perhaps by just stating it.
| lupusreal wrote:
| If I assumed any woman wearing pants and a tshirt wants
| to be called a man, I'd offend them more often than not.
| Guessing somebody is transgender because they aren't
| conforming to gendered fashion conventions is an
| extremely bad idea.
| kemayo wrote:
| The parent wasn't just talking about the top-level of
| their clothes, though, but about overall presentation.
| There's generally a lot more cultural signifiers embedded
| that you can cue off of than just "pants or skirt?" after
| all. Haircuts ( _highly_ gendered even at similar
| lengths), subtleties of makeup and jewelry, the cut of
| the aforementioned t-shirt and pants, body language, etc.
| (And there 's still room to get it wrong, of course. But
| fortunately people who're living in the gray areas are
| generally aware they're doing so.)
|
| Explaining all the details of how to distinguish e.g. a
| butch lesbian from a trans man to someone from a
| different cultural tradition is, of course, an incredible
| pain.
| lupusreal wrote:
| I've known plenty of women with male or gender neutral
| clothing, "boy cut" hair and no interest in jewelry. They
| weren't men. Assuming that a woman is transgender because
| she isn't "girly" is idiotic.
|
| The number of people, particularly women, who don't
| adhere to gendered fashion greatly exceeds the number of
| transgender people.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Using polite/formal grammar form is just something that comes
| completely naturally to native speakers, who practiced it
| their whole lives, in particular the entire childhood while
| speaking to adults. It does not put you in a position of
| inferiority or submission, people will still have nasty
| arguments or explicitly insult each other while maintaining
| formal grammar form.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| What is your native language and home country? Would your
| view change if you spent some time in a language/culture
| where this is normal (Korea/Japan)?
| samus wrote:
| Good for you if you live in a culture without strong T-V
| distinction. Not using the correct form of address will make
| you need perceived as impolite in the best case or highly
| disrespectful and confrontational in the worst case, and you
| will land on their sh*t list. This can be dangerous if you
| have to interact with police!
|
| PS: even in English, you're probably not using as many
| F-bombs and S-bombs when you talk to powerful people.
| vidarh wrote:
| I remember the first time I was referred to as "sir" after
| moving to the UK from Norway.
|
| In Norway it's now rare to come across the equivalent "Herr"
| other than as an insult (implying you're stuck up), outside
| of very limited cases, such as instead of "Mr", but that use
| too is in steep decline.
|
| English is full of ways to express implied hierarchy through
| different wording / tone without the T-V distinction.
| tonfa wrote:
| Good luck trying that with cops in France (who
| condescendingly will "tu" you while expecting "vous" in
| return)
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Thing is, it's not like the semantics and tone of formal
| speaking or speaking with deference is missing in English. It
| just doesn't take the form of special pronouns or conjugations,
| etc.
|
| Native speakers at least are capable of picking up on all sorts
| of nuance in word choice and tone
|
| Give it a couple hundred years, all the subtle or not-so-subtle
| nuances will standardize and settle into grammar constructs.
| emodendroket wrote:
| > This felt to me like one of the reasons why English became
| the dominant language for business over time.
|
| I don't think that has much to do with it. I think it has more
| to do with the dominant political and economic position of the
| United States. French served a similar role in the past despite
| having all the features you describe.
| abtinf wrote:
| America was an economic backwater until the 1900s.
|
| France was, and to a greatly diminished extent still is, a
| global power.
|
| French has T-V distinction.
|
| French has arbitrary noun gendering.
|
| The noun gendering alone makes it significantly easier to
| embarrass yourself speaking French than English.
| emodendroket wrote:
| There are not that many words distinguished only by gender
| and I don't think the number of those where it would really
| be an embarrassing blunder is that great. All languages
| offer pitfalls like this anyway.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| (French here) It's not really about words distinguished
| by gender, but misgendering a word will sound very weird
| to French people. So much so you'll be labeled as foreign
| immediately. As crazy as it may seem, but misgendering
| objects sounds worse than misgendering people (in a
| purely linguistic way).
| emodendroket wrote:
| I mean, of course, but sounding obviously foreign isn't
| so bad if your meaning can be understood and you haven't
| accidentally said something with a wildly different
| meaning than intended.
| mark38848 wrote:
| People really overestimate the importance of this. If you
| go to le or la gare doesn't matter much. But if you don't
| know "gare" in the first place you could have a harder
| time. Also "embarrassing yourself" doesn't happen because
| everybody loves it when n-th (for any n > 1) language
| speakers attempt to speak their language.
| leereeves wrote:
| The dominance of America really started after WWII, but
| before that the British Empire spread the English language
| around the world.
|
| If France had won the Seven Years War or the Napoleonic
| Wars, French would probably still be the global _lingua
| franca_ , because people didn't choose which language to
| learn, they learned the language of whichever colonial
| power controlled their lands.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| > America was an economic backwater until the 1900s.
|
| The US was the largest economy in the world by 1890.
|
| It should be obvious that it wasn't an economic backwater
| even before that.
|
| By 1850 it bigger than Russia, Italy, Spain, Germany, or
| France.
|
| The US stopped being an economy backwater sometime in the
| early 1800s. Well over a century earlier than your claim.
| tzs wrote:
| I'd guess that the size of a country's import/export
| economy is more important than the size of its total
| economy when it comes to how much a country will
| influence language in the rest of the world.
|
| Google is refusing to turn up anything useful when I try
| to find information on when the US became a top
| importer/exporter.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > America was an economic backwater until the 1900s.
|
| That seems like a stretch.
|
| My understanding is that plantation cash crops grown in the
| South like Cotton were a major export in the early-mid 19th
| Century.
|
| And then of course Standard Oil was incorporated in 1870.
|
| Maybe the effect of American industrialization didn't have
| a big effect internationally until the ~1890s and onward,
| but I'd hardly say the USA was a _backwater_ throughout the
| industrial revolution.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Maybe the effect of American industrialization didn't
| have a big effect internationally until the ~1890s and
| onward, but I'd hardly say the USA was a backwater
| throughout the industrial revolution.
|
| The US had a huge effect on industrialized Europe before
| that. The British textile revolution would never have
| happened if the US hadn't supplied a large chunk of the
| cotton (from plantations in the South) and if the British
| hadn't physically destroyed the the-dominant textile
| industry in India.
| refurb wrote:
| > America was an economic backwater until the 1900s.
|
| The US was the largest economy in the world in 1890. That
| would suggest it wasn't a backwater until at least the
| early 1800's.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| > The noun gendering alone makes it significantly easier to
| embarrass yourself speaking French than English.
|
| English has more than enough of ways to easily embarrass
| yourself without the need for arbitrary noun gendering.
| andruby wrote:
| Such as?
|
| I'm genuinely asking for examples. I've embarrassed
| myself quite often in French, yet haven't much in
| English.
|
| * neither are my mother tongue
| akkad33 wrote:
| A couple of examples that come to mind is using the wrong
| verb form, since English has a lot of irregular verbs,
| and another is mispronouncing words, since there are many
| words with the same spelling but different
| pronunciations. And then you have words like "read",
| which have both characteristics.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| The adjective order one is really interesting to explain:
| the adjectives in "good small old red wooden English
| book" have to come in that order or it sounds very
| peculiar.
|
| Other European languages may have this to, but explaining
| it to people who speak unrelated languages usual results
| in a wail of "but why?!"
|
| Many English speakers don't themselves realise it - in
| the UK, at least, we are not carefully taught English
| piece by piece after a very young age. Most grammatical
| understanding comes when (if!) you study a foreign
| language and then you find out that "find out" is a thing
| called a "phrasal verb".
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| Steven Pinker's book on irregular verbs has a great
| example of this.
|
| little kids often mess up on irregular verbs ("I eated
| supper") because they (subconsciously?) learn the
| grammar, they aren't memorizing the past tense of every
| word
| dazc wrote:
| The beauty of English being that everyone understands
| what the kid meant.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| I think in German some smashed up sentence like "ich
| haben gegesst der Abendessen" would also be
| understandable no matter how brutally you fluff the
| verb's conjugation and gender of the noun.
| oblio wrote:
| > Other European languages may have this to, but
| explaining it to people who speak unrelated languages
| usual results in a wail of "but why?!"
|
| They do, and just like in your other example, they
| internalize it, they just don't realize they do it
| automatically because it "sounds good".
|
| > Most grammatical understanding comes when (if!) you
| study a foreign language and then you find out that "find
| out" is a thing called a "phrasal verb".
|
| That's super funny, isn't this taught in middle school or
| something? In Romania you study Romanian grammar from 5th
| to 8th grade (11/12 to 14/15), and you learn syntax,
| morphology, etc.
|
| Does the average English speaker really not know about
| the term "phrasal verb"? :-)
| okeuro49 wrote:
| > Does the average English speaker really not know about
| the term "phrasal verb"? :-)
|
| Yes.
|
| Furthermore, I didn't know the English word for it,
| despite being a native speaker, but do know the German
| "Verben mit Prapositional-Erganzung", from having learnt
| German.
|
| Speakers of English as a foreign language will know more
| about English grammar than English native speakers.
| vintermann wrote:
| There are a ton of language quirks that have their own
| name, but aren't prominent enough that they're taught -
| especially not in your native language, if they're
| peculiar to it. (In a second language, they often _have_
| to be taught, because they stick out and make no sense in
| the context of your first language).
|
| Phrasal verbs are not typically mentioned when Norwegian
| kids learn English, because not only do we have them, we
| typically use them in exactly the same way (e.g "eat up"
| is the same as "spis opp", "find out" is the same as
| "finne ut"). No reason to explain an obscure and odd
| concept if kids do the right thing by default anyway.
|
| "Modal particles", small words that subtly indicate the
| speaker's certainty or degree of concern, likewise is
| another strange little grammatical quirk that German has,
| but Norwegian kids generally don't need a name for since
| Norwegian has them too and they can mostly just be
| translated directly.
| samvimes wrote:
| > "good small old red wooden English book" have to come
| in that order or it sounds very peculiar.
|
| Interesting. As a native English speaker (from the US),
| I'd say that "good small old" felt a little awkward for
| me to say out loud. Personally, I'd probably say "good
| old small ...", but to your point, there isn't exactly a
| "right" answer, just one that sounds right. I'm assuming
| you're also a native English speaker from the UK, so
| maybe we've discovered a funky difference between the
| English in our two countries. It would be a fun study to
| give native English speakers a list of those adjectives,
| and the noun "book", and tell them to order them.
| jackfoxy wrote:
| I would also say _good old small.._ but the rest of the
| adjectives flow as I would expect to hear and say.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| There are lots of tricky things in English language, but
| the adjective order doesn't nearly carry the potential
| for embarrassment as gender-related mistakes.
| fegu wrote:
| To "the" or not to "the" before a name or noun.
| andruby wrote:
| I've heard lots of people with a Spanish background make
| mistakes against this. Iirc in Spanish you often should
| use it in front of a name.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| It's probably the most common class of error for people
| who learn English as adults. There's lots of strange,
| hard to explain meaning encoded in which (if any) article
| a person chooses. "I dropped by the school today" and "I
| dropped by school today" are both valid and have slightly
| different implications
| volemo wrote:
| Series "Mind your language" is one big example (along
| with cheesy '70s humour).
| tim333 wrote:
| Prior to the 1900s there was the British empire which
| spread English around a fair bit.
|
| >At its height in the 19th and early 20th century, it was
| the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the
| foremost global power. (wikipedia)
|
| It was said the sun never set on the British empire as it
| had bits in most time zones which led to a joke from the
| Indians that it was because God didn't trust the British in
| the dark.
| danmaz74 wrote:
| But the UK was the biggest empire on earth at that time.
| solidsnack9000 wrote:
| English was a widespread language of trade long before
| America was a big deal because of British shipping.
| vlz wrote:
| Shipping sure, but also simply the fact that a good part of
| the worlds population were part of the British empire.
| Wikipedia has 23% of the world population at 1913.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire
| emodendroket wrote:
| Yes, but so were other contenders like French and German
| which have not retained such a prominent role.
| samus wrote:
| Germany was not even unified by the time the UK took over
| India from the East India Company. Germany eventually had
| colonies, but they altogether didn't have such a long-
| lasting influence on the global economy as the British
| Empire had.
|
| The French colonial empire was much larger, but in the
| 19th century they were not really present in the Americas
| anymore, and Vietnam was their only major colony in Asia.
| pmontra wrote:
| Yes, but the German speaking empire of the last centuries
| was Austria, not Germany.
|
| Both had limited reach outside Europe. Germany had that
| colonial push to grab what was left in Africa and in
| Oceania at the end of the 19th century. Losing WW1 ended
| it all.
| ghayes wrote:
| I'm in a comical situation that me and my Mexican father-in-law
| mutually refer to each other as usted despite the fact we'd
| both be better off switching to informal, except for the fact
| that neither of us want to offend the other by being so casual.
| jack2312 wrote:
| Huh, having learned Spanish as a non-native speaker, I was
| taught that the two forms had more to do with the closeness of
| the relationship than they did with some sort of social rank or
| superiority.
|
| For example, a family member who you would address as "sir" (at
| least in the Southern U.S.), maybe a parent or grandparent,
| might be taken aback if you addressed them with the formal
| "usted" in Spanish, because it didn't imply respect, but that
| you didn't consider the person close. Another example would be
| prayer, where God is definitely superior to us, but you would
| address Him with the less formal "tu", because the love He has
| for us makes that a close and personal relationship. (I'm not
| even sure that the word "formal" is the right one to use here,
| as like I say, it's not quite the same as in English.)
|
| You could also have a business conversation where you'd use
| "usted" without necessarily implying respect, because "tu"
| sounds out of place for a distant relationship like that. (I.e.
| using "tu" wouldn't be disrespectful, so much as it would just
| be weird or akward.)
|
| Am I misunderstanding the usage of the two forms, or could
| someone enlighten me a bit more on the subject? Is the dynamic
| similar in other T-V languages, or is it used more to denote
| social status/tiers?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Not sure about Spanish, but in Slavic/Germanic languages it's
| as OP says, the plural form tends to show more respect for
| e.g. talking to a stranger, especially an older one. Students
| typically address teachers this way and teachers don't do it
| in return, until university where students are considered old
| enough and it's typically done mutually. People of the same
| age that know each other almost always just use singular
| form.
|
| There are actually three forms if we're completely exact:
| singular 2nd person, plural 2nd person, and plural 3rd
| person. German uses the first and last, Slavic languages have
| all three but the third is very dated and practically unused
| by now.
| mijamo wrote:
| It is not that easy and depends a lot on context. I know
| people who use "usted" to their grandparents (who use "tu" in
| returns), but at the same time you have lots of shops where
| they will say "tu" to their customers (particularly clothing,
| not so much for restaurants). Depends a lot of the
| country/region and even family.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| In Flanders, Belgium there is a slow adoption of T.
|
| But what is weird is that the V is used in BOTH contexts. The T
| is used in the Netherlands but slowly more and more people in
| Flanders are adopting the T version in written language.
|
| And it irks me. Companies sending you a letter addressing you
| with the T version, like we're friends.
|
| I don't want to be addressed by V for reasons of respect. I
| don't want to be addressed with T for reasons of not wanting to
| be infantilized.
| elric wrote:
| Just to add to this:
|
| The T form (jij/je) sounds infantile in Flemish because it
| _is_ infantile. The real T form in Flemish is gij /ge. But
| it's somewhat archaic and some people look down on it, so
| it's rarely used in written conversation. In many cases, the
| jij/je-form is used when talking to children or used by
| children. Once they grow up a bit, they tend to use the
| gij/ge form for informal conversation, and jij/je for
| slightly more polite conversation.
|
| It's a bit different in the Netherlands, where the archaic
| forms are more rare outside of Brabant, and where reality
| more closely matches the textbook T-forms.
|
| Companies addressing me using the infantile form doesn't
| bother me. What I find much more annoying is companies trying
| to be cutesy, with random slang thrown in their
| communications It always gives me "How do you do, fellow
| kids"-vibes.
|
| I only very rarely encounter anyone talking in the V-forms.
| It's more common in the written form.
|
| Being a bit of a contrarian, I refuse to write in the jij/je
| T-form, and consistently stick to the archaic gij/ge.
|
| TL;DR: Flemish has 2 T-forms and one V-form, but the newer
| T-form is sometimes a V-form. Languages are fun.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| First of all, thanks for reminding me about ge/gij. I am
| born in Flanders, raised in Flemish, and lived there for 28
| years and I forgot about that.
|
| When I was growing up people did not address me with
| je/jij. My mom was a teacher. Ge/gij all the time.
|
| And if you want to be polite you would switch to u/u.
|
| And I get the same vibes as you do. But since ge/gij is not
| suitable for formal communication I insist on using u/u.
| This also increases the barrier to use any kind of
| infantile cosy language.
|
| 'Wees gerust' just irks me.
| toolslive wrote:
| Education has been trying to kill the "ge/gij" form for
| decades by ignoring its existence. In Flanders, they are not
| really succeeding. Everybody still uses it in spoken form.
| However, the number of people knowing how to conjugate it
| properly in written form is decreasing. "Gij hadt" fe, is
| correct but rarely encountered .
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| "Gij loopt". Base + t. That's how I learned it.
|
| Do you know why education is trying to do this? I find that
| as it infiltrates business communication that it encourages
| a language that sounds like we're friends. We're not. I'm a
| person. You're a company who is overcharging me for basic
| things like internet. No need for informal cosy language.
| felipellrocha wrote:
| Funny enough, i never noticed that english feature because PT-
| BR is similar, we only use Voce instead of Tu.
| echaozh wrote:
| If tenses are cases are what keeps languages from being global,
| you should all speak Chinese now, whose words don't change
| forms at all.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yeah but doesn't the way you intone a word change the meaning
| entirely? With how heavy accents are the norm for English
| second speakers I would think this makes Chinese practically
| impossible to learn to pronounce. Also 90% of the world can
| read the latin alphabet already which is a good start when
| learning a new language. Years ago I made a small attempt to
| learn some Russian and Cyrillic was like smashing against a
| brick wall, I imagine it's 200x worse for Chinese since you
| have to learn 5000 new characters.
| grishka wrote:
| Russian is my native language and it does also have this
| distinction (ty/vy). For me, there's not really any _issue_
| with that, not so much that I would want to remove this
| distinction. It 's very clear to me most of the time which
| pronoun to call someone. Yes, it depends on a lot of context,
| but I've been making these decisions every day for all my life
| so it's not _that_ hard.
|
| In your example about work, I'd just always use "ty" without
| giving it a second thought, and wouldn't mind others using it
| to address me. Maybe it's just our culture that has a more lax
| attitude towards it, I don't know.
|
| The only case that I find kinda cringy is when people (rarely)
| call bartenders and waiters "ty". For me it's very clear that
| when a person you don't know serves you, it should be "vy".
|
| > This felt to me like one of the reasons why English became
| the dominant language for business over time.
|
| Probably not. English is messy when it comes to pronunciation
| and irregular verbs, not exactly the easiest language to learn.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| In Central Europe at the turn of the 20th century it was the
| norm for husband and wife to talk to each other in the formal
| "V" form.
|
| Today that would be completely unimaginable.
| alentred wrote:
| I have a colleague who comes from a culture with a T-V
| distinction and lives in France where it also exists. But the
| line we would draw between "toi" and "vous" in French is quite
| different from his culture: he apparently has a more formal
| "framework" for T-V and he uses "vous" much more often than
| others would, so it often creates some distance.
|
| So, T-V distinction is also very cultural in a sense where the
| line between the two is.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I'm trying to learn German and though it's probably frowned upon,
| I would prefer to just use "Sie" for everything because it's less
| to remember and just simplifies so many things. I wonder if my
| ancestors had the same thoughts, which is how the formal "You"
| just took over as the only thing we really use in English.
| scotty79 wrote:
| It's weird how plural form is seen as polite.
|
| Maybe it was because if you were meeting unknown person you might
| verbally assume they are a part of some group. Either to put them
| at ease so they know they are not perceived as lonely prey or to
| safeguard yourself by communicating that you are aware and
| prepared that more of them might be hiding in the bushes.
| akkad33 wrote:
| It is kind of like the Royal We
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we
| scotty79 wrote:
| I'm not entirely convinced. Royal we seems to be its own
| separate thing, quite restricted in its use at that.
| flint wrote:
| I'm gonna use this: "Thou art a jammy bugger!"
| lordnacho wrote:
| What a lovely Christmas present. I did not think I would ever
| write anything that ended up on the top of HN.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Great question.
| jaspax wrote:
| I'm the author of the top answer, and I believe that this is
| the top-voted thing that I ever posted on any StackExchange
| site. It was a lovely surprise to see it here today, and I hope
| that everyone else enjoyed reading it. Merry Christmas!
| lordnacho wrote:
| Every few weeks or so the last decade, someone has upvoted
| the question. Always interesting to see the difference
| between this question and essentially everything else I've
| ever written.
|
| Thanks for the answer btw, it was enlightening. I can't help
| but remember the first lines in my mind each time I get the
| upvote notification ("Drumroll... !").
| peter303 wrote:
| Of course. You was formal while thou was informal.
| astrea wrote:
| I think about what's discussed often as it relates to euphemisms.
| For example, exonyms for minorities or disabled people changes
| all the time. My theory is that euphemisms are "disposable" in
| that they start "clean" with no external meaning or definition
| and therefore can't be perceived as negative. Over time, it
| absorbs meaning and context and eventually it becomes as "dirty"
| as word it supplanted and the cycle continues.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Huh, so there is precedent for the singular "they."
| jon_richards wrote:
| I'd hardly say this is "precedent" for something that's been
| done since the beginning of the language. (The Canterbury Tales
| are generally considered the threshold between old and modern
| English and they use singular "they".)
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Hindi has 3: aap, tum, and tu.
| verisimi wrote:
| The formal thing is the lesser issue in my view.
|
| The larger issue, is the lack of distinction between the singular
| and plural - 'you' stands in for both.
| poszlem wrote:
| This is kind of interesting when you think of what would happen
| if someone decided to "impose" the use of "you" instead of
| "thou". In English it happened organically. Take communist
| Poland, for example. The ruling party was all about changing how
| people talked, pushing words like "comrade" and all. But their
| attempt to make people use the plural form for a single person
| totally backfired (as did the use of "comrade"). It felt so out
| of place that when communism fell, the old way of speaking came
| roaring back and the distinction between "thou" and "you" is now
| stronger than ever before. Just goes to show, some things you
| just shouldn't be forced. Language change is definitely one of
| those things.
|
| Makes me wonder in what interesting ways the current wave of
| English language manipulation (neo-pronouns, "blocklists" etc.)
| will backfire.
| rekoros wrote:
| I grew up in the Soviet Union, and once when I was being
| particularly terrible my mom informed me that English-speaking
| children are probably much better, and that they even address
| their parents as vy (you-polite).
| mderazon wrote:
| I am learning European Portuguese, which very much still has
| formal vs informal and interestingly, using Voce (formal singular
| second person) can actually be insulting, as I think it means you
| think the other person is old.
|
| So they drop the Voce but still use the formal verb conjugation.
|
| Navigating cultural language rules can be hard...
| Tommstein wrote:
| Not somewhere I would've ever expected to run into Peter Shor (of
| Shor's algorithm; one of the highlighted comments on the top
| answer).
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > This explains a peculiarity of traditional Quaker speech, which
| one often hears in films set in the early Americas. The Quakers
| opposed making any distinctions of rank, so they insisted on
| addressing everyone as thou, not as you. The irony is that today
| we perceive thou to be archaic and formal, while the original
| intent is to be more informal.
|
| In german, the distinction between formal and informal address is
| disappearing into the informal address. It's interesting that the
| Quakers also tried this, but that in english (the first language
| were this distinction disappeared?) it ultimatly disappeared into
| the formal address.
| pictureofabear wrote:
| I feel like the word "sir" has also been gradually sliding into
| informality as well.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I wonder if it in part has to do with English's overall status
| as a "second class" or even "lower class" language even in its
| own native land during the years after the Norman invasion. Up
| until a certain point the aristocracy spoke mostly Norman
| French, and even after they switched to English they did so
| with a form _heavily_ filled with French loans and written with
| French-derived orthography.
|
| What I mean to say is, if the language is on the whole not the
| language of the nobility, even the formal pronouns would not be
| perceived as elevated, really. If you really wanted to impress,
| you'd switch to French (or even Latin, etc.)
| largbae wrote:
| Thee? Thou must assuredly have encountered thine pronoun in
| formal works before...
| goblinux wrote:
| Anyone else hear this in Withers' voice? I just finished BG3
| chaorace wrote:
| Despair "thee", thou shalt meet thy maker!
| tus666 wrote:
| Imagine a language with an entire system of honorific speech
| required when speaking to one's superiors. Oh wait...they already
| exist.
| Daub wrote:
| 'Thou' was used to refer to someone of a lower social rank and
| also to indicate intimacy or familiarity. AFAIK 'thee' was used
| in a similar way.
|
| In some parts of the UK, thou is still used. Certainly I have
| been addressed in this way in the past.
| chaorace wrote:
| Reminds me of the Japanese pronoun Jun ( _pronounced "ki-
| mi"_). The nuance is surprisingly similar ( _appropriate for
| lovers & underlings, almost never strangers_), cultural &
| geographical gaps notwithstanding.
|
| Makes you wonder what kind of wires must get crossed in the
| human id for intimate pronouns to function this way.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Thou and thee are the same pronouns in different cases - like
| I/me, she/her, we/us, they/them. Thou seest me, I see thee.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I thought "you" _was_ the formal version and "thou" was
| informal. Didn't read the article though. No time right now but
| I'll do so later.
|
| I'm happy more languages drop this formal stuff though. In Dutch
| it's also pretty uncommon now to say "U". And I like it.
|
| In fact it used to be much worse, when I was young every agenda
| came with a whole page of formal verbiage for people of different
| roles (like ministers, judges and other officials). I don't think
| anyone uses that stuff anymore.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| "Where hast tha bin since ah saw thee....?"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8MWb1FlODQ
| adamkochanowicz wrote:
| Knowing that "you" is the formal and "thou" is the informal is
| hard to grasp. I can't imagine saying "f--- thou, buddy!"
| xerox13ster wrote:
| Sure, of course that's weird. You'd say "thou ought know
| thyself".
| bradley13 wrote:
| In German, we have the formal "Sie" and the informal "du". The
| formal means of address is dying incredibly fast. It's been a
| huge change just in the past 10 years or so. I'm not a linguist,
| but I'm pretty sure this is due to the influence of English,
| which is everywhere.
|
| Just as an example: as a gray-haired professor, I use "du" and my
| first name with my students. I may be an outlier in my
| generation, but that is entirely normal for younger colleagues.
| 10 years ago, that would have been...strange. 20 years ago, it
| was unheard of.
| boernard wrote:
| I think English definitely has it's influence but I think
| another big factor is the general idea that this hierarchic
| thinking just gets outdated and younger Germans strive to have
| a sense of equality.
| MandieD wrote:
| I used "Sie" with my now mother- and father-in-law until the
| first time I visited them after we got engaged and my mother-
| in-law brought out a bottle of sparkling wine and asked if we
| could be on "du" terms. That was when I started using their
| first names.
|
| That was in 2008, and was, from what I gather, already rather
| old-fashioned. It was common enough in the past that there's a
| verb for it that my mother-in-law used when making the offer:
| duzen.
| Tistron wrote:
| 317 comments, and nobody pointing out that the comments on the
| accepted answer has a comment by _the_ Peter Shor.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| The more complex a language is the easier is to express complex
| ideas.
|
| Imagine a language with just two words. Can you think or say
| anything in it? Sure, but it isn't going to be easy.
| the_omegist wrote:
| On a side note, I always thought the absence of "formal you" made
| english-speaking countries more laid-back. This is usually a good
| thing, because it makes ideas and information circulate more
| smoothly.
|
| But like everything, it has some drawbacks : the constant need to
| level everything and to some kind of hypocrisy.
|
| I have nothing to back my intuition on, just some Sapir-Whorfish
| reasoning...
| rand1239 wrote:
| There is no you. It's just an illusion in consciousness.
| Disagree?
|
| Try to find and locate the you in the next 5 mins.
|
| There are only sensations, images, thoughts and sound which rises
| and go in consciousness. No you.
|
| Unless a thought comes and says thats you. But it's again just a
| thought.
| davzie wrote:
| Only the formless.
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