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Informal and formal "you" | ||
Tags: Polite/Informal Forms | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5130 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 17 of 32 17 February 2011 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
Certain parts of the US South: You - formal: Y'all You - informal: You'en You - plural: All y'all OK, I've had my fun. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 17 February 2011 at 10:56pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Qinshi Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5753 days ago 115 posts - 183 votes Speaks: Vietnamese*, English Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 18 of 32 31 March 2011 at 6:59am | IP Logged | ||
This is correct. In place of pronouns, you would generally either use: 1. One's first name if they were of a similar age to you or younger, not to mention you'd have to at least know them to a certain extent. You can even replace 'I' with your own first name. 2. Rank or title. This is the most common. For example, if you were addressing a teacher you would call them thầy [male] or cô [female]. It also includes professions such as: bác sĩ (doctor), luật sư (lawyer)... 3. Within a given family, it is quite common to call siblings by their ordinal rank in the family. For example, the eldest brother would be called anh cả (anh hai in Southern Vietnamese) and the 2nd eldest son would be called anh hai (anh ba in SV). Another method is to use a title + first name. eg. chị Lan/anh Phong. 4. Believe it or not, there isn't a neutral term for 'I' or 'you'. The closest to these would be tôi (tui) and bạn (friend). Edited by Qinshi on 31 March 2011 at 7:04am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5408 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 19 of 32 31 March 2011 at 9:01am | IP Logged | ||
It was still the same for me when I was a child in the 90's. I said "vous" to all teachers and still do. I think my college teachers would be quite amazed to be called "tu" and I would be quite ashamed to do so. I once had a teacher in school who insisted on being adresses as "tu" but I never managed to do so (incidentally it was the only teacher I ever knew who beated the pupils). Things are relaxed among the young generation but it depends a lot on who's speaking to whom. Even I (who cherish the "vous") wouldn't say it to fellow students, even ones I'm not acquainted with, but I would be rather surprised to be adressed as "tu" in shops (apart from skateboarding shops or the like). When I start a new job or meet new people (except maybe friends of friends) I always use "vous" even if I know that it will be replaced with "tu" in the next hour. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5308 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 20 of 32 31 March 2011 at 9:46am | IP Logged | ||
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In Cantonese we have no Sie/du distinction, but when you're trying to show respect, you'd say Mr Tam or Uncle Tom, etc, instead of "you":
- Has Mr Chan been here before? (= Have you been here before?) - Does Uncle Tom need any help? (= Do you need...) - I'll ring Miss Wong tomorrow. (= I'll ring you tomorrow) - Is Mr Chan's wife coming as well? (= Is your wife coming as well?) But you do still mix in some "you"s or else it sounds really weird. And sometimes you use both together: - I wonder if Mr Wong you are free? - Mr Wong you are free? You don't HAVE to talk like that, though; it's not rude not to. Most of us aren't even aware of this phenomenon. But you might sound too intimate. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 21 of 32 22 July 2011 at 9:43am | IP Logged | ||
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In Dutch, the formal u is still very common but the informal jij is fast gaining ground. In daily life, it is considered polite to say u to anyone 1) several years older than you or 2) over the age of around forty, but it also partly depends on people’s own attitude. Someone who is in their forties but very outgoing and informal will often be called jij as well. Saying jij to someone who is obviously an u would be extremely forward and quite rude. Many people will ask to be addressed with jij because being called u "makes them feel old" but the initiative should always be with the u-person.
People my age (early twenties) are jij-d by everyone but I am occasionally called u as well, usually by young children or people over a certain age, I would say around sixty. This last group might still call me “juffrouw” (miss) as well, instead of the common “mevrouw”, which used to mean Mrs. but is nowadays used for all women regardless of their marital status. When I was in elementary school, all my teachers were addressed with jij and their first names but in high school, it was strictly meneer/mevrouw and u. Now that I'm at university, I wouldn't dream of saying jij to any of my professors, even the ones I know and like and who may not be that much older than me. However, I have several friends who are apparently on such good standing with a professor that they use jij and her first name and there are a couple of other (young) professors who I suspect would ask to be addressed with jij if they spoke Dutch (most of my professors speak only English with their students so it's a little hard to say what I would call them). All of these professors are still quite young but it is mostly due to the fact that they are “down with the youth”, for lack of a better term. As for the relationship between family members, the use of u/jij has changed a lot over just a couple of decades and I think this has to do with u, which used to be just a term of respect, having acquired a sense of distance between the speakers. Fifty years ago, all (or most) children called their parents u and nobody thought anything of it, but these days it is extremely rare to call one’s parents u, since it suggests a certain stiffness and formality that doesn’t seem appropriate in a parent-child relationship. Grandparents are increasingly “jij-d” by their grandchildren, probably influenced by the fact that their parents belong to the first generation to call their parents jij. It’s common for colleagues to jij each other but in someone’s boss might be called u, depending the formality of the workplace. My father used to have several people working under him (actually, he probably still does but I’m not sure because she changed jobs) and they all called him jij because they knew each other well and it was a very informal workplace. My mother is on jij/first name basis with the mayor and alderman of my hometown because she knows them through her work. So, to summarize (because this post is way too long already), I would say the use of jij vs. u mainly has to do with the perceived intimacy between the speakers, as well as their age and their own attitude. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jarm Newbie Australia Joined 4912 days ago 33 posts - 55 votes Speaks: English* | Message 22 of 32 22 July 2011 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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In regards to clumsy's comment:
In Mongolian, there is a distinction in the singular, but not the plural. чи for friends or younger people, and та is the respectful term. Та нар is the plural (нар being a plural marker), but there is no "чи нар". In the plural, there isn't any distinction. In fact, plurality is not marked on nouns nearly as much in Mongolian as it might be in French, German or English. It's only marked when it's necessary and can't otherwise be gathered from context. For instance, you would write 'three book', but probably not 'three books', although you might write 'books'. I don't know about the other languages from that region, if they are similar or not. I know a lot of language enthusiasts (or nerds :P) refer to the Altaic language family, but of the linguists I've talked to about it, they haven't been convinced of it. Also, in regard to the Vietnamese situation, I'll add that distinctions are made based on the relationship between the speaker and the title used. So if you wanted to be respectful to a woman, you would call her 'grandmother'. If you wanted to be disrespectful, you might call a man older to you 'younger brother'. These kinship titles are used basically the same as pronouns in European languages, just with a bit more nuance. It is because you're talking to a person, and noting the relationship between yourselves, that there aren't completely neutral terms which correlate to European languages. Even using a more neutral term like tôi or ta, you are, in effect, making a distinction by not making a distinction. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6659 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 23 of 32 22 July 2011 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Sweden we've never had the 'formal' plural like many of our brother countries but rather something many refuter
to as title hell. The informal pronoun 'du' was used among family and to young children and animal, and God. When you spoke to a person of lower social status i.e. a clerk at a store or your driver, you would say 'Ni', 'Ni' was also used in non personal letters and phone calls where you would not possibly know who rung or were to answer. Everyone else were to be addressed with their title, or if they were married women, the title of their husband in feminine. This was hell, because you would have to memorize a persons occupation and academic or military grades, and know them whenever you needed to speak to the person in question. Due to this certain workarounds were developed and Swedish is now full of passive voice polite request 'Shall it be some coffee?' 'Does it have a dog?' 'How would it perhaps be with a schnapps?'. Among the rising middle class and people who became more intimate with their staff one begun to simply use third person and use the name of the person. My grandmother, Märta, quoted the son of a family she once worked as a maid at "Åh Märta, hon bakar så goda bullar!" (Lit. Oh, Märta, she bakes so tasty cinnamon rolls') - though this was directly addressing her — not speaking about her to another person. After a while though, people got tired of all this clumsy rather stupid formality, and after the chief of a ministry declared that every employer from now on was to address him as 'du' the entire thing collapsed within a couple of years. Everyone, except the royal family, is now addressed to as 'du'. The royal family is addressed to either 'your royal highness' (ers höghet) or in third person 'What did the King think about his travel to Öland this year?' 'Vad tyckte Kungen om sin res a till Öland i år?' 'How do the Crown Prinsess look upon the fact that people starve in Africa?' 'Hur see Kronprinsessan på get faktum att folk i Afrika svälter?'. Books translated form English keep their sir, ma'am, Mr. Mrs. and Ms. although there are Swedish forms for these words - though obsolete. The Swedish is Herrn (sir), Frun (ma'am), Herr, Fru, Fröken. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6665 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 24 of 32 06 August 2011 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | ||
Not only in Austria! In Germany, "Sie" still is the standard for adults who don't know each other. In business, there are some companies that promote the use of "du" instead of "Sie", e.g. the SAP policy is to use "du" with colleagues (which can lead to awkward situations in SAP training courses, where the lecturer will use "du" with SAP employees and "Sie" with the others). Turkish and Persian have a T/V distinction exactly like French (i.e. 2nd person singular for informal and 2nd person plural for formal). Arabic has no such distinction (2nd person singular for everybody). Bengali has a three-way distinction: different conjugation for "very informal", "informal" and "formal". Actually, they don't conjugate for number, so the singular and plural forms are identical. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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