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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)

#61

Post by retrac »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #51

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)

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.

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#62

Post by 082349872349872 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #56
082349872349872 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 plaît, j'aimerais bien savior comment fonctionne la t…

La turbulence ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence#Kolmogorov's_theory...

see also https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg12416936-800-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?)

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#63

Post by yongjik »

pm215 wrote: post #35
propter_hoc wrote: post #7

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 お前 and 貴様, where you use a pronoun…

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 ha…

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).

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#65

Post by bxparks »

verditelabs wrote: post #46

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 gree…

Wait, wat? I always thought that "y'all" was a contraction of "you all", so meant the "plural you" instead of the "singular you".

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#66

Post by fsckboy »

baxtr wrote: post #48
dwheeler wrote: post #24

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.

According to the article “you” was formal and “thou” informal.

from the spelling i assume they were pronounced the same, but hopefully they both rhymed with thou.

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#68

Post by mewpmewp2 »

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.

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#69

Post by baxtr »

hilbert42 wrote: post #59

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 Germa…

I've heard that “Sie Asshole” is the proper way to insult someone while staying polite.

Re: Did English ever have a formal version of "you"? (2011)

#70

Post by NewsyHacker »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #57
dwheeler wrote: post #24

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.

Or King James Bible - some Christians stick to the original translation (1611).

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.
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