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Informal and formal "you" | ||
Tags: Polite/Informal Forms | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| tozick Diglot Groupie Poland Joined 6362 days ago 44 posts - 69 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English | Message 9 of 32 17 February 2011 at 3:36am | IP Logged | ||
I'm sure it was really confusing for you. To be honest sometimes it's a bit confusing even to myself. I always had a problem with people who are only few years older than me. It depended on how i met a particular person, I think. If it was someone I knew from school i would use 'ty'. On the other hand there is, for example, this neighbour, older than me by 5-8 years, whom I've had know for over 10 years and while she uses the 'ty' form i stick to 'Pani'. Most of the time it feels weird to say 'ty' to someone much older even if he insists on it. It doesn't feel quite right. Also it's a bit funny that you mention university lecturers, because these days they usually prefer if you use their real title instead of just saying 'Panie profesorze'. It's not too big of a deal, especially considering they usually hold master's degrees or PhDs, so it's a bit of an ego boost for them. The parents thing is really recent and it's mostly amongst teenagers. Let me try to illustrate the extent of that. When I was in primary school(I'm 20 so let's say 10 years ago) there was only 1 person who did that, it was so noticeable that I still remember that. In the lower secondary school there were 2 or 3 people, 1 of them being the same person as in primary school. In highschool(2 years ago), though, there were at least 6 people doing that in my class only, so 6 out of 30 people. Funnily enough parents of the friend who did that in the primary school were divorced too, and he also lived with his mother, and he used her name instead of 'mama'. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 32 17 February 2011 at 9:28am | IP Logged | ||
Ye, that was the norm, also then, and most of the teachers would say "tu", but two of our teachers would say "vous", presumably because they considered us young adults and not children. Interestingly enough, those two teachers were quite cruel. One did not mind screaming at a child that failed to solve a problem at the board in front of the whole class, calling him garbage and fool, and the other one actually used physical violence when he got angry. The Director herself called one of them "La terreure de CES Anatole Bailly", which was the name of my school. I was put in a different category for being foreigner and on a good footing with the Director, so I was always treated with the utmost respect, but some of the things I saw raised the hairs on my back. At one point one of the teachers, who was otherwise a nice guy, got so upset because some of the kids had been bullying me, that he hit one of the guys in my class. Unfortunately, he hit one of my friends, who had actually been standing up for me, and defended me. I have never been so mortified in my entire life. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| RogerK Triglot Groupie Austria Joined 5075 days ago 92 posts - 181 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian Studies: Portuguese | Message 11 of 32 17 February 2011 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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The German 'Sie' is alive and well in Vorarlberg, Austria. The use of 'du' & 'Sie' is pretty much what you would learn in a normal textbook. I was with my accountant last week and he referred to his secretary as Frau So & So and used 'Sie' when addressing her. This is normal and in all shops or when conversing with someone you don't know 'Sie' is used. Children address the adults they don't know with 'Sie' and teachers use 'du' in the class room when addressing the children. In a social setting 'du' is used very quickly after you have met someone for the first time.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 32 17 February 2011 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Denmark the situation is as in Norway: "De" has almost died out, and the last person with whom I was "Des" (ie. on "De" terms) was one of my teachers at the university in the 70s. Maybe the queen still expects people to say "De", but then she would be the last person in the country to do so.
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| lingvisten Tetraglot Newbie Hong Kong Joined 5199 days ago 16 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English, Cantonese*, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 13 of 32 17 February 2011 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder if such two-way T/V distinction exists in other non-European languages. I
suspect this is an Indo-European thing spread to other languages through contact. Mandarin Chinese has two words for 'you', the informal ni3 and the formal nin3, but I am pretty sure such distinction was inexistent in older varieties of Chinese and must have been introduced by some old scholars who was educated in the West. (The idea of introducing new pronouns into a language sounds so outlandish to me. I used to think that this is just another textbook-ish thing that you will never hear in actual conversations. I was wrong.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5453 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 14 of 32 17 February 2011 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||
As far as I remember from when I was reading about the history of the Spanish language, the T/V distinction is a Roman thing, starting with people saying "vos" instead of "tu" to the Roman emperor. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5178 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 16 of 32 17 February 2011 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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There is also a form used by Polish police officers: my:
Co my tutaj robimy? wypiszemy mandacik? OK, I am just kidding. In Non-European languages it's like: Japanese and Korean use so called honorific speech, they use different verb endings. Korean is a little more complicated than Japanese. Vietnamese - you don't use pronouns that much, you just call people as they would be your family: chao chi! chao em! chi an gi? chi an nem hi, older sister! hi brother! what is sister eating? sister is eating spring roll my Vietnamese is poor, so I don't know if I am correct with those sentences. In Altaic languages, they use plural you for honorific I think. Mongolian, Kazakh, Turkish etc. They do it in Hindi as well. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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