Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

english.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 441 posts

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

#361

Post by moffkalast »

t8sr wrote: post #86
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…

Interesting. I learned German in Switzerland and the only people who ever use sie are all over 50. Everyone you meet is addressed as du, except maybe in formal letters. I’m wondering if some weird looks I sometimes get in Germany might be because of that. Is “sie” used more commonly there?

"Sie hast" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

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

#362

Post by ruune »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #107
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 remember when I was learning German seriously I switched over software and websites to German... and felt very uncomfortable that facebook would always use 'du' with me. I'm guessing it's some marketing "oh we're so informal and cool" marketing wank talk, but it grossed me out. Not sure if any native German speakers that had that reaction.

E-Mails from big cooperations become increasingly "du". Sometimes it's still weird, but overall everyone got used to being on "du" basis with big faceless cooperations. I don't really notice anymore.

That being said, I'm young enough to have not really experienced a time when it was unheard of to call someone you don't know really well "du". I'm only learning from this thread that it seems to be a fairly recent development.

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

#363

Post by fegu »

andruby wrote: post #343
oldgradstudent wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The noun gendering alone makes it significantly easier to embarrass yourself speaking French than English. English has more than enough of ways to easily embarrass yourself without the need for arbitrary noun gendering.

Such as? I’m genuinely asking for examples. I’ve embarrassed myself quite often in French, yet haven’t much in English. * neither are my mother tongue

To "the" or not to "the" before a name or noun.

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

#364

Post by pmontra »

samus wrote: post #346
emodendroket wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but so were other contenders like French and German which have not retained such a prominent role.

Germany was not even unified by the time the UK took over India from the East India Company. Germany eventually had colonies, but they altogether didn't have such a long-lasting influence on the global economy as the British Empire had. The French colonial empire was much larger, but in the 19th century they were not really present in the Americas anymore, and Vietnam was their only major colony in Asia.

Yes, but the German speaking empire of the last centuries was Austria, not Germany.

Both had limited reach outside Europe. Germany had that colonial push to grab what was left in Africa and in Oceania at the end of the 19th century. Losing WW1 ended it all.

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

#365

Post by danmaz74 »

abtinf wrote: post #272
emodendroket wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This felt to me like one of the reasons why English became the dominant language for business over time. I don't think that has much to do with it. I think it has more to do with the dominant political and economic position of the United States. French served a similar role in the past despite having all the features you describe.

America was an economic backwater until the 1900s. France was, and to a greatly diminished extent still is, a global power. French has T-V distinction. French has arbitrary noun gendering. The noun gendering alone makes it significantly easier to embarrass yourself speaking French than English.

But the UK was the biggest empire on earth at that time.

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

#366

Post by HeckFeck »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #2

Thee and Thou are still used in Northern England (Yorkshire and Lancashire). Although probably only by older people and often spoken as Thi and Tha.

It's not the most common, but 'ye' survives in Northern Ireland.

'What about ye?' - would be a friendly way of asking 'how do you do?'

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

#367

Post by FromTheSteppe »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #256
FromTheSteppe wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different cultures. Persian has 1100 years of literature and recent media for this. On the other hand you can't dirty talk with a straight face in Persian, since nobody has ever heard or read about it, it sounds super funny.

I admit I know barely anything about the subject (but I took an interest in Burton as a younger man): is The Perfumed Garden not "dirty", ie erotic literature? I recall the One-Thousand-and-One Nights being quite bawdy (talking about lusting after well-endowed servants, IIRC); maybe that's not authentic Persian literature though? Maybe I misunderstood "nobody has ever read or heard about it"? Can you help me better u…

The current 1001 nights is Arabic and the Middle Persian one is lost. Nevertheless, it is a pre-islamic literature. Perfumed Garden is Arabic and has just been recently translated into Persian.

New Persian literature starts around Rudaki (9th century). Since Islam made sex and showing affection taboo, the tiny fraction of explicit erotica are not studied/known by the general public. Because of the taboo, majority of Persians have not ever heard their parents speak affectionately. And when we study affectionate literature in school the teachers tell us it's about the love for God, and the exams will question us about such love.

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

#368

Post by FergusArgyll »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #359
andruby wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as? I’m genuinely asking for examples. I’ve embarrassed myself quite often in French, yet haven’t much in English. * neither are my mother tongue

The adjective order one is really interesting to explain: the adjectives in "good small old red wooden English book" have to come in that order or it sounds very peculiar. Other European languages may have this to, but explaining it to people who speak unrelated languages usual results in a wail of "but why?!" Many English speakers don't themselves realise it - in the UK, at least, we are not carefully taught English…

Steven Pinker's book on irregular verbs has a great example of this.

little kids often mess up on irregular verbs ("I eated supper") because they (subconsciously?) learn the grammar, they aren't memorizing the past tense of every word

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

#369

Post by oblio »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #359
andruby wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as? I’m genuinely asking for examples. I’ve embarrassed myself quite often in French, yet haven’t much in English. * neither are my mother tongue

The adjective order one is really interesting to explain: the adjectives in "good small old red wooden English book" have to come in that order or it sounds very peculiar. Other European languages may have this to, but explaining it to people who speak unrelated languages usual results in a wail of "but why?!" Many English speakers don't themselves realise it - in the UK, at least, we are not carefully taught English…

> Other European languages may have this to, but explaining it to people who speak unrelated languages usual results in a wail of "but why?!"

They do, and just like in your other example, they internalize it, they just don't realize they do it automatically because it "sounds good".

> Most grammatical understanding comes when (if!) you study a foreign language and then you find out that "find out" is a thing called a "phrasal verb".

That's super funny, isn't this taught in middle school or something? In Romania you study Romanian grammar from 5th to 8th grade (11/12 to 14/15), and you learn syntax, morphology, etc.

Does the average English speaker really not know about the term "phrasal verb"? :-)

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

#370

Post by jampekka »

whycome wrote: post #165
snidane wrote: post #109

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…

Quebec French seems to be in the process of dropping the formal. It’s way less common there than metro/france French.

In Finnish the formal (second person plural) is almost gone. It's mostly in ceremonial use, or used as a quirk. In Swedish the formal is even more extinct and there was an active campaign to eradicate it in the 1970s.

I very much welcome this development.

Post reply on HN