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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)

#411

Post by mijamo »

jack2312 wrote: post #288
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…

Huh, having learned Spanish as a non-native speaker, I was taught that the two forms had more to do with the closeness of the relationship than they did with some sort of social rank or superiority. For example, a family member who you would address as "sir" (at least in the Southern U.S.), maybe a parent or grandparent, might be taken aback if you addressed them with the formal "usted" in Spanish, because it didn't…

It is not that easy and depends a lot on context. I know people who use "usted" to their grandparents (who use "tu" in returns), but at the same time you have lots of shops where they will say "tu" to their customers (particularly clothing, not so much for restaurants). Depends a lot of the country/region and even family.

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

#412

Post by mark38848 »

emodendroket wrote: post #394
tuetuopay wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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.

People really overestimate the importance of this. If you go to le or la gare doesn't matter much. But if you don't know "gare" in the first place you could have a harder time. Also "embarrassing yourself" doesn't happen because everybody loves it when n-th (for any n > 1) language speakers attempt to speak their language.

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

#413

Post by footy »

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.

This is true of every language though. Language acquisition works like this (and people understand what young children mean) regardless of whether you're learning English or Spanish or German or Korean.

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

#414

Post by freddie_mercury »

tzs wrote: post #409
freddie_mercury wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America was an economic backwater until the 1900s. The US was the largest economy in the world by 1890. It should be obvious that it wasn't an economic backwater even before that. By 1850 it bigger than Russia, Italy, Spain, Germany, or France. The US stopped being an economy backwater sometime in the early 1800s. Well over a century earlier than your claim.

I'd guess that the size of a country's import/export economy is more important than the size of its total economy when it comes to how much a country will influence language in the rest of the world. Google is refusing to turn up anything useful when I try to find information on when the US became a top importer/exporter.

The US has always been one of the world's top exporters due to its cotton industry and the cotton boom that started in the 1780s. It is quite likely that the US was a Top 1 or 2 exporter by the time the Constitution was signed in 1789. Remember there were very few manufactured goods yet and not even that much else that was worth importing.

By the 1850s US cotton accounted for 77% of the cotton used in Britain, 90% used in France, 60% used in Germany, and 92% used in Russia.

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

#415

Post by oldgradstudent »

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

Tenses, pronounciation that is completely divorced from spelling, idioms, prepositions, word order, articles, and so on.

As a foreigner that observed a lot of other foreigners speaking English: it is not an easy language to master.

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

#416

Post by eszed »

jackfoxy wrote: post #401
samvimes wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

I would also say good old small.. but the rest of the adjectives flow as I would expect to hear and say.

Yeah, but "good old" has an independent phrasal meaning, as in "good old Charlie Brown". That's fine if that's what you mean, or if you want to play with the ambiguity between the two interpretations - but if that's definitely not what you mean, then best use the standard phrasing.

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

#418

Post by scheme271 »

tim333 wrote: post #358
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.

Prior to the 1900s there was the British empire which spread English around a fair bit. >At its height in the 19th and early 20th century, it was the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the foremost global power. (wikipedia) It was said the sun never set on the British empire as it had bits in most time zones which led to a joke from the Indians that it was because God didn't trust the British in the da…

Probably the combination of the British empire and subsequent US dominance led to english being established as the language. If you go to places like South Asia, English is pretty well established despite it being no one's native language there. So the British spread it around globally and then the US being a dominant superpower pretty much cemented it's status.

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

#419

Post by herbst »

emodendroket wrote: post #264
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…

> 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.

I wonder why we (central Europe, 90s) all learned British English if they goal would have been to not sound awkward next to Americans?

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

#420

Post by samus »

pmontra wrote: post #364
samus wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The legacy of that empire (it was purely Austria only after 1809) and of Prussia was quite long-lasting though. Because of the medieval Ostsiedlung and rulers granting land and privileges, there once were German-speaking enclaves all over Eastern Europe. A few still exist. Only ethnic cleansing after WWII and Germany enabling them to move away by granting citizenship to them made them disappear.

Some legacy still remains: for economic reasons, German is one of the most frequently learned languages in Eastern Europe.

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