Trust the British to settle on the formal version.
Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?
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Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't universal. German is a counter example -- the formal Sie derives from the third person plural, while it still preserves Du and Ihr for informal second person with singular and plural. I don't know Spanish well, but it probably contradicts this as well. Usted and Ustedes are not related to vosotros (informal second person informal, not used in the Americas) and take the verbs for third person like German. I…
I read long ago in a book by Mario Pei that "usted" was originally "vuestra merced" (your grace).
I remember learning that in high school, and things made so much more sense; it explains why usted takes third-person verbs and possessive pronouns.
Wasn't vosotros used as a formal tu at one time, especially with regard to royalty? I seem to recall reading that, but I can't say it with any degree of confidence.
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?
#113This relates well to one of the fascinating things I realized while learning German: the fact that so many English and German words and sounds have phonetic connections, coming from their common Germanic ancestry. For example, the letter "d" in German corresponding to "th" in English: die/der/das -> the drei -> three Donner -> thunder Ding -> thing daher -> therefore and, most relevant to this discussion: du -> thou…
Any Danish speakers here? It should be even closer to English as that's where the Angles and Saxons are from.
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?
#114This makes me want to see a poll HN to see how many have read any amount of The KJV, and how much they've read.
Doesn't the KJV avoid the formal-plural convention entirely? Most of my reading has been in newer versions, but I seem to recall that it used thou for singular and ye for plural very consistently; I sometimes wish for that distinction in modern Bible translations.
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?
#115Second person used to be: Singular----|----Plural Thou Ye, You Thee You Thine Yours Thy Your Which correspond to the nominative, objective, and possessive cases accordingly. By the way, the "Ye" is not related to the "Ye" in store signs that say "Ye Olde...". Y was sometimes used by typographers instead of the Old English letter Þ(Thorn), which makes a "Th" sound, so those store signs should be pronounced as " The Ol…
Some English dialects retain these distinctions leading to (somewhat forced) sayings like "Don't thee tha me, tha them that tha's thee" - a Yorkshire admonishment against over familiarity.
In my hometown it's quite common to hear "'ow's tha bin?" ("How've you been?") and "sithee later" ("see you later").
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?
#116Greetings from a speaker of a linguistic oddity that doesn't have a universal form of the word "you". My native language -- Sinhalese -- has two forms: written and spoken. The written form, which has a grammar very similar to Latin, does have a universal "you", but the spoken form, which is largely grammer-less except for tense, does not. You literally cannot address someone without knowing their status/relationship…
There are some similar mechanism in Japanese. "Anata" is generally considered to mean "you" (more formal than the informal"omae") -- but it is too familiar for general use (it can often be translated as "dear", depending on context). The safest approach is usually name+san. Japanese is also often used without pronouns (in general it can be a surprisingly terse language for having rather few grammatical markers). I ha…
Most Japanese pronouns are also associated with gender (as in, the gender of the person using the word, not who it's referring to). Anata is mildly feminine, omae is rather masculine. But like Sinhalese, polite Japanese goes to great lengths to avoid using the "you" pronoun, people are usually referred to by last name, title, job description etc instead.
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?
#117This relates well to one of the fascinating things I realized while learning German: the fact that so many English and German words and sounds have phonetic connections, coming from their common Germanic ancestry. For example, the letter "d" in German corresponding to "th" in English: die/der/das -> the drei -> three Donner -> thunder Ding -> thing daher -> therefore and, most relevant to this discussion: du -> thou…
Interesting! I think Dutch (Mix between french, german and english) is even closer to English. I am not an expert, just thinking out loud. de -> the drie -> three (ie and ee got the same pronunciation) donder -> thunder ding -> ding daarvoor -> therefore dit -> this dat -> that donderdag -> thursday vader -> father moeder -> mother and a lot more similarities: school -> school week -> week weekend -> weekend maand ->…
I mentioned the similarly of Dutch in a different reply. You'll actually also find quite a few places where Dutch is more similar to Scandinavian languages than to English as well. Norway has two official languages, for the most part my examples are from Bokmål ("book language") which basically started out as a formalisation of Danish as used in Norway. I've prepended the Norwegian:
tre -> drie -> three (ie and ee got the same pronunciation)
torden -> donder -> thunder
ting -> ding -> ding
derfor -> daarvoor -> therefore
dette -> dit -> this
det -> dat -> that
torsdag -> donderdag -> thursday
far, but also the informal/slang "fatter" and the old-fashioned "fader" -> vader -> father
mor, and the older/slang form "moder" (mødre, transliterated "moedre" is the plural form of
both versions) -> moeder -> mother
skole -> school -> school
uke in bokmål, but "veke" in Nynorsk (based on spoken Norwegian dialects) -> week -> week
weekend (though that is a modern import from English) -> weekend -> weekend
måned (maaned) -> maand -> month
fredag -> vrijdag -> friday
mandag -> maandag -> monday
ut -> uit -> out
god -> goed -> good
for -> voor -> for
du -> je -> you
min -> mij -> my (pronounced the same)
vi -> wij -> we
auto -> auto -> auto
vogn -> wagen -> wagen
bil (we got our word from the end of automobil;
English got its from old French, I assume that's where yours come from too) -> kar -> car
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?
#118This relates well to one of the fascinating things I realized while learning German: the fact that so many English and German words and sounds have phonetic connections, coming from their common Germanic ancestry. For example, the letter "d" in German corresponding to "th" in English: die/der/das -> the drei -> three Donner -> thunder Ding -> thing daher -> therefore and, most relevant to this discussion: du -> thou…
Any Danish speakers here? It should be even closer to English as that's where the Angles and Saxons are from.
Look at my lists of Norwegian translations. Most either apply directly for Danish too, or with minor changes ("Bokmål", the written language used by a majority of Norwegians, was largely derived from Danish, and hasn't diverged all that much)
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?
#119In languages I know formal version of "you" (local version of singular second person) is plural form of the same word. Historical explanation is rather simple. Remember history lessons: kings used to say "we, the king, think..." meaning that the king is a representative of some group. Due to this language quirk when addressing such a person formally you actually address whole group the person represents, hence the pl…
This isn't universal. German is a counter example -- the formal Sie derives from the third person plural, while it still preserves Du and Ihr for informal second person with singular and plural. I don't know Spanish well, but it probably contradicts this as well. Usted and Ustedes are not related to vosotros (informal second person informal, not used in the Americas) and take the verbs for third person like German. I…
I especially didn't mention if it is second or third form because this varies: some languages might have plural form of second ant third person to be the same word.
I agree with your point of distancing and today that is usually the case, because direct confrontation is left for friends. Phrases like "do the gentlemen want ..." or "could she help me ..." are not counter examples: basically by addressing someone indirectly like this one allows ANYONE to respond. Like husband, or one of the gentlemen to collect everyone's orders.
Re: Did English ever have a formal version of “you”?
#120In Polish, you don't use the plural vy as a formal singular. In Russian you do. I took Polish lessons at one point and my teacher would wince every time I accidentally called him vy . He told me the Russians used to force Poles to address each other that way in their own parliament. So sensitive was he to this long-past linguistic oppression that he couldn't help but be offended when an English speaker who happened t…
I don't understand - why would it be offensive to have to use the formal case with each other in a parliament? Is the idea that вы ('vih'/'vy') implies formality/lack of familiarity and the Polish wanted a more conversational tone in their governance?