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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)

#391

Post by tuetuopay »

emodendroket wrote: post #277
abtinf wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are not that many words distinguished only by gender and I don’t think the number of those where it would really be an embarrassing blunder is that great. All languages offer pitfalls like this anyway.

(French here) It’s not really about words distinguished by gender, but misgendering a word will sound very weird to French people. So much so you’ll be labeled as foreign immediately. As crazy as it may seem, but misgendering objects sounds worse than misgendering people (in a purely linguistic way).

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

#392

Post by samvimes »

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…

> "good small old red wooden English book" have to come in that order or it sounds very peculiar.

Interesting. As a native English speaker (from the US), I'd say that "good small old" felt a little awkward for me to say out loud. Personally, I'd probably say "good old small ...", but to your point, there isn't exactly a "right" answer, just one that sounds right. I'm assuming you're also a native English speaker from the UK, so maybe we've discovered a funky difference between the English in our two countries. It would be a fun study to give native English speakers a list of those adjectives, and the noun "book", and tell them to order them.

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

#393

Post by okeuro49 »

hilbert42 wrote: post #163
biztos wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

First, note my correction to the mistake in the above 'Afterthought'. Brain wasn't in gear. _ 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 u…

> English-speakers are notoriously bad at learning second languages

My experience of learning German is that Germans would prefer to speak with you in English, as they want to practise their language skills with a native speaker.

English speakers aren't bad at learning new languages, rather there is little incentive to do so, given everyone speaks or wants to speak English.

Trying to speak a foreign language is sometimes met with confusion "why are you bothering to learn another language? Everyone speaks English" or downright hostility "if you're English just speak English".

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

#394

Post by emodendroket »

tuetuopay wrote: post #391
emodendroket wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are not that many words distinguished only by gender and I don’t think the number of those where it would really be an embarrassing blunder is that great. All languages offer pitfalls like this anyway.

(French here) It’s not really about words distinguished by gender, but misgendering a word will sound very weird to French people. So much so you’ll be labeled as foreign immediately. As crazy as it may seem, but misgendering objects sounds worse than misgendering people (in a purely linguistic way).

I mean, of course, but sounding obviously foreign isn't so bad if your meaning can be understood and you haven't accidentally said something with a wildly different meaning than intended.

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

#395

Post by davzie »

rand1239 wrote: post #384

There is no you. It's just an illusion in consciousness. Disagree? Try to find and locate the you in the next 5 mins. There are only sensations, images, thoughts and sound which rises and go in consciousness. No you. Unless a thought comes and says thats you. But it's again just a thought.

Only the formless.

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

#396

Post by adhesive_wombat »

dazc wrote: post #382
FergusArgyll wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The beauty of English being that everyone understands what the kid meant.

I think in German some smashed up sentence like "ich haben gegesst der Abendessen" would also be understandable no matter how brutally you fluff the verb's conjugation and gender of the noun.

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

#397

Post by jjtheblunt »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #39
dahart wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This says it really was thorn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde#History Ð/ð (eth) certainly is the voiced th in Old English and modern Icelandic. I’m not sure why thorn was being used for ‘the’.

I would recommend consulting Prokosh Comparative Germanic Grammar. It’s a very old reference and may not be online, but what my germanic linguistics professor used with us Germanic linguistics grad students. He was a world renowned expert on the various futhark versions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_H._Antonsen

Prokosch's book is still available

https://a.co/d/0u4S28Y

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

#398

Post by volemo »

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

Series “Mind your language” is one big example (along with cheesy ‘70s humour).

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

#399

Post by sib »

nitwit005 wrote: post #295
softfalcon wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I feel like people forget about that whole British Imperialism thing too easily. We all speak English because at one point the English practically owned the entire planet.

It is a bit more complex than that. My father (American) learned German because his mother considered it "the language of science". That attitude is mostly gone.

When I studied computer science (which, at my university in the United States was still a part of the mathematics faculty), we were required to study one of German, French, or Russian, as those were historical languages of math.

Seems a bit quaint now - but at least it got me to learn German and even spend six months studying at the University of Heidelberg.

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

#400

Post by ajmurmann »

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…

There are lots of tricky things in English language, but the adjective order doesn't nearly carry the potential for embarrassment as gender-related mistakes.
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