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Usage of Polite/Formal You... | ||
Tags: Polite/Informal Forms | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Paramecium Tetraglot Groupie Germany Joined 5713 days ago 46 posts - 59 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Russian Studies: Japanese | Message 9 of 17 19 June 2009 at 12:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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For normal conversations I always use the informal "Du", if the person I am speaking with is around my age (23) or younger. For all other persons which are older than me and which I don't know, I use the formal "Sie". If the person is older and you know him/her very good, this person normally will ask you one day for calling him/her "Du". Mostly they will just switch to the "Du" without asking you formally.
Of course there are some exceptions. For example if I talk with a person older than 60, even if she says "Du", I will out of respect stay at the "Sie". If I for example go at the bank, at a tourist agency...ect., I also always would use the formal "Sie", even if the person I am talking with is my age. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5726 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian | Message 10 of 17 19 June 2009 at 2:49am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know about Urdu, but Hindi also has the form tu. Tu is an intimate form while tum is familiar. As for Russian, there are ты and вы (in writing often capitalized as Вы). Generally, you address older, respected people or more distant individuals using the latter, but if you are in an Internet chatroom it's actually pretty common to see people just using ты when they don't know anything about the other people who are responding. Kazakh has sen and siz, with the plural forms sender and sizder. It's much like Turkish, although Turkish does not maintain the distinction in the plural and just uses siz for both. Edited by snovymgodom on 19 June 2009 at 2:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marlowe Triglot Newbie Norway Joined 5713 days ago 24 posts - 25 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish Studies: French, German | Message 11 of 17 19 June 2009 at 3:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think pretty much the same thing happened in Norwegian as in Swedish; some time during the 70's the formal "De" went out of use, and only the informal "du" remained.
I'm 25 years old, and I have never said the word "De" in my entire life, except maybe as a joke. I certainly wouldn't use it when speaking to an older person. Occasionally it may appear in letters from institutions that want to appear extremely "correct", but it just looks bizarre to me at this point. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6149 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 12 of 17 19 June 2009 at 5:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't really like the T/V distinction especially in Western European languages since I see it as a stupid mediaeval innovation in the vulgar tongues (Latin never had it) but strangely I find honorifics in East Asian languages quite interesting. Chinese has for the most part gotten rid of them, and they probably weren't used by most people (peasants) very much anyway, but they survived very well in Japanese and Korean. I don't quite think this has a uniquely confucian origin since even Malay at the beginning of the 20th century had a similar system with humble and respectful language, i.e. verb forms and pronouns that vary according to the relative status of the speaker and listener.
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| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5839 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 13 of 17 19 June 2009 at 11:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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Is it true that Korean from South Korea has even more ways of addressing people than Japanese? How formal are they there?
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| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6149 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 14 of 17 19 June 2009 at 11:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I don't know Korean, but according to wikipedia it has seven different verb paradigms varying according to politeness level in addition to the limited humble and respectful honorifics as opposed to four in Japanese as commonly described (also with the humble/respectful stuff) to which I think a further form can be added equivalent to the Haoche form - namely the use of polite verbs in their plain form: 御座る instead of 御座います, いらっしゃる instead of いらっしゃいます, which isn't usually found in English manuals I think.
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| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5670 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 15 of 17 19 June 2009 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
Kuzu zangpola, Alkeides! I see you live in Bhutan, and wondered about Dzongkha. I do know about the "-la" endings in formal speech, but does Dzongkha have other ways of expressing the informal/formal? Does it have more than two levels? There are so few resources for Dzongkha, that my knowledge is unfortunately limited to mostly just a few words and phrases from a visit to Bhutan a few years ago. I would love to learn more. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6149 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 16 of 17 19 June 2009 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is however surprisingly easy to contact Bhutanese online, just go on Facebook and search. Tell them you're interested in Dzhongkha and they should be quick to accept your invitations. Edited by Alkeides on 19 June 2009 at 1:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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