161–170 of 441 posts
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…
As someone coming from a culture with T-V distinction [1], I always wished we dropped one of the branches like English did in the past. The informal T vs formal V causes confusion in conversation with semi-strangers. Eg. At work you never really know which way to speak to someone at a watercooler. If you choose the informal T you make them your equal. Ehich might be perceived as insulting to them, since they might wa…
Is speaking to someone formally considered ending up in an inferior position in all cultures? In Persian if someone expects to be spoken with formally, they have to speak formally themselves. So when you speak formally you're kinda bringing both parties up. You can even flirt by speaking formally.
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…
> it is reserved for the closest of relationships such as family, lovers etc. You use du for your friends, your classmates, people your own age up through about college, and anyone you think you are or should be on informal terms with. Such as shop workers (sometimes), bartenders (usually), waiters (depending on location), random people in the street (in places like Berlin, if they're not senior citizens), and anyone…
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Thanks for the info. My German is far from perfect so I don't claim any authority on the matter.
Most of my time in a German-speaking environment was in Austria (Wien) and that was now some years ago. Back when I was learning the language it was always stressed to me not to use du even with friends as it would be deemed as unwanted or excessive familiarity and could be taken as an offense.
That said, from my limited experience there's are significant cultural differences between, say, Berlin and Wien with the latter being more formal and reserved (or it was so when I was living there two decades ago). Thus I find your observation interesting, so I'm now quite curious to see what cultural shifts if any have taken place in Wien since then.
My first time there was in the early 1980s whilst Communism was still in place, so back then there was essentially no movement of people between Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc. and Austria. When I went back in the early 1990 and lived there at various times for about a decade I noticed a definite cultural shift which the locals put down to the movement of people from ex-communist counties such as Slovenia. However I can't say I noticed any shift in the language, but then that's not surprising as most people I worked or dealt with were better at English than I was in German.
No doubt things have become more informal almost everywhere these days so I'm not surprised that there has been a shift in German usage just as there has been in English—even in my lifetime it's been very noticeable.
English is a dog of language, it's slipshod, inconsistent and all over the place (it beats me how anyone who is not a native speaker ever learns it). The point I was making about thou/du illustrates the problem with English quite well, English-speakers are notoriously bad at learning second languages so why make, say, learning German even more complex by not explaining actual parallels between the two languages? It seems no one cares much about the details these days.
As an aside, in English you goes for everything—friends, relatives, one's dog, even inanimate objects. Thus it's interesting to note slang has picked up the cudgels and fought back with a colloquial use of the second person with youse. Many wince at this word and consider it uncouth and uneducated, but when one thinks about it, it makes sense when talking to a small group of friends. Seems funny really, we English speakers chucked out the perfectly good second-person (and respectable) word thou and at least in some circles have replaced it with the uncouth youse. Clearly, modern English is missing something important by using you for the singular and plural forms of the second person.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
English became the dominant business language for reasons unrelated to the English language itself but because of the relative power of the people who spoke the language.
Yes. But then the English language got a _lot_ of reps as the lingua franca of commerce and science.
So still not really due to some intrinsic merits of the language.
As someone coming from a culture with T-V distinction [1], I always wished we dropped one of the branches like English did in the past. The informal T vs formal V causes confusion in conversation with semi-strangers. Eg. At work you never really know which way to speak to someone at a watercooler. If you choose the informal T you make them your equal. Ehich might be perceived as insulting to them, since they might wa…
As someone coming from a culture with T-V distinction [1], I always wished we dropped one of the branches like English did in the past. The informal T vs formal V causes confusion in conversation with semi-strangers. Eg. At work you never really know which way to speak to someone at a watercooler. If you choose the informal T you make them your equal. Ehich might be perceived as insulting to them, since they might wa…
Is speaking to someone formally considered ending up in an inferior position in all cultures? In Persian if someone expects to be spoken with formally, they have to speak formally themselves. So when you speak formally you're kinda bringing both parties up. You can even flirt by speaking formally.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
asshole is a very euphemistic translation
Could you explain. I'd guess "Arschloch"? The translation of "bad language" is very tricky. English is my mother tongue but I live in a German (sort-of, it's complicated) speaking country. I've learned that "scheisse" is not a very good translation for the English word "sh*t". It seems to me that the English word is much stronger/more offensive than the common German translation at least where I'm from. German "schei…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe it was a stand in for yᷤ instead of Þ, which is a much smaller leap.
Your first unicode character won't render in Windows. þ? I can see it is LATIN SMALL LETTER Y + COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER S .. not sure what that ligature is, though. My knowledge of old English is very lacking :)
edit: it shows up in the "descendants" list on the side of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
English became the dominant business language for reasons unrelated to the English language itself but because of the relative power of the people who spoke the language.
Yes. But then the English language got a _lot_ of reps as the lingua franca of commerce and science.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you explain. I'd guess "Arschloch"? The translation of "bad language" is very tricky. English is my mother tongue but I live in a German (sort-of, it's complicated) speaking country. I've learned that "scheisse" is not a very good translation for the English word "sh*t". It seems to me that the English word is much stronger/more offensive than the common German translation at least where I'm from. German "schei…
The word in question is "wichser". The dictionary says it means "motherfucker". In my perception wichser is one of the strongest insults in german. https://youtu.be/S1ZnpYEsUNs?si=nGr-2MgtBMR16dgl