"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.
Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
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Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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".
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?
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".
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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".
I guess like "comrade", any kind of imposed social norm becomes an object of satire?
I think so, I remember a joke bill burr made about any term used to describe the mentally underdeveloped will inevitably be used satirically.
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
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”
Did they not like the feminine connection between "lei" and "Lei"? Or what was the motivation?
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
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
#45For 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.
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
#46In 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.
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
#47In 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.
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.
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
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
#48More 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.
According to the article “you” was formal and “thou” informal.
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
#49Slovene has three levels of politeness:
* ti (second person singular)
* vi (second person plural)
* oni (third person plural) -- archaic
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)
#50It’s just like Southwestern Brazilian Portuguese uses “você” 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.