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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.
As non-native speaker I had learned early that 'you' so I thought that there was probably some other form no longer used.
In German, we have the formal "Sie" and the informal "du". The formal means of address is dying incredibly fast. It's been a huge change just in the past 10 years or so. I'm not a linguist, but I'm pretty sure this is due to the influence of English, which is everywhere. Just as an example: as a gray-haired professor, I use "du" and my first name with my students. I may be an outlier in my generation, but that is ent…
That was in 2008, and was, from what I gather, already rather old-fashioned. It was common enough in the past that there’s a verb for it that my mother-in-law used when making the offer: duzen.
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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.
> 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.
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
What a lovely Christmas present. I did not think I would ever write anything that ended up on the top of HN.
I'm the author of the top answer, and I believe that this is the top-voted thing that I ever posted on any StackExchange site. It was a lovely surprise to see it here today, and I hope that everyone else enjoyed reading it. Merry Christmas!
Thanks for the answer btw, it was enlightening. I can't help but remember the first lines in my mind each time I get the upvote notification ("Drumroll... !").
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> 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
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English was a widespread language of trade long before America was a big deal because of British shipping.
Yes, but so were other contenders like French and German which have not retained such a prominent role.
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.
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 it culturally English speaking to think this just sounds like social anxiety rather than an expected norm? If someone thought they were superior than me and expected a particular greeting or whatever, I'd tell them where to shove it lol We are all equal.
PS: even in English, you're probably not using as many F-bombs and S-bombs when you talk to powerful people.
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> After Argentina's recent election I've been consuming lots of content from there, and it sometimes surprises me how frequently they use vos in things that would seem to call for politeness. Vos itself was formal address in Spain in the time of Cervantes IIRC, it is also the origin of vuestro merced (usted) vos is not really formal in Argentinian Spanish, although it does share an etymologocal root with vuestro merc…
Vos is informal, Usted is formal. That's it. We don't use "Tu" AFAIK.
The same happened with Portuguese in Brazil, 'Vós Mercês', which is formal, is used throughout the country as (simplified) 'você'. And the informal form, 'tu', is rarely used (only in the South).
>tu', is rarely used (only in the South) even in places and situations where 'tu' is used it's mostly still conjugated as if it were second person singular. 'EU BEM QUE TE AVISEI - TU EMPINOU ELE PEI'
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…
In your example about work, I'd just always use "ты" without giving it a second thought, and wouldn't mind others using it to address me. Maybe it's just our culture that has a more lax attitude towards it, I don't know.
The only case that I find kinda cringy is when people (rarely) call bartenders and waiters "ты". For me it's very clear that when a person you don't know serves you, it should be "вы".
> This felt to me like one of the reasons why English became the dominant language for business over time.
Probably not. English is messy when it comes to pronunciation and irregular verbs, not exactly the easiest language to learn.