And what language and region is it?
I’ve noticed my language teacher uses the informal you in one language and the formal one in the other.
I just learned the other day that in English “you” is the old formal.
Here in Pennsylvania, we know that Quakers used thee and thou far longer than anyone else. Turns out, that was a protest movement. You and yours were used for nobility and royalty, the piece I was reading said the “royal we” is a leftover from this setup.
As a protest against classism and politics, Quakers refused to use you and yours at all and used thee and thou for everyone regardless of status. Instead, common usage English went the other way and adopted you and yours for everyone.
My mother met old Quaker ladies in the 1950s who still used thee and thou in common conversation.
Fun consequence of this: the ten commandments should be translated into WAY less formal English if want to be traditional.
“No murders y’all” weirdly doesn’t have the same punch when engraved on a stone tablet, though. (And most Americans can’t read ancient Hebrew.)
The ten commandments are future imperatives, but English doesn’t have that mood and instead archaic language is used in place of it.
They are as strong a command as can be given, but a literal translation would just be “you will not”. That lacks the weight of the original form so translators try to make it read more seriously than the language allows with “thou shalt not”.
Y’all best not do no killin’ now, ya hear!?
“no babbling the Lord’s name just because, like, hello?!”
That ain’t even yo damn wife!
Well, maybe. If thou is for peasants, then the implication the commandments are directed specifically at the non-royal?
No, because who gets addressed as you and who gets addressed as thou, was dependent not on the social standing of the one being addressed, but the social standing of the speaker compared to the one they’re speaking to. To put it more simply, in a given situation, the “dominant” party is addressed as you by the “subservient” party, while the subservient party is addressed as thou by the dominant party.
So, for example, in conversation A peasant and their lord are talking. The peasant would address their lord as you, and the lord would address their subject, the peasant, as thou. But in conversation B when the lord is talking with their own liege, let’s say, the king, the lord addresses the king as you and the king would address his vassal, the lord, as thou.
In conversation A, the lord is the dominant party, and thus is to be addressed as you by the subservient party. In conversation B however, the lord is the subservient party, and thus is to be addressed as thou by the dominant party.
So, getting back to the commandments, since in an interaction between God and a human the human always is the subservient party while God is always the dominant party, God would address the human as thou.
“No murders, y’all”
Omg, that’s too funny!
“No ogling at your peeps’ wives, c’mon you dum-dums!”
I saw that video too recently. Was it one of Rob’s? English dude, lives in Berlin?
I genuinely love Robwords and watched one yesterday about lost negative words, but no, I looked this one up manually because I was curious. I’ll go look for Rob’s video today because I’d love to know more and he’s a great presenter.
deleted by creator
In French/France I use the formal vous when talking to strangers or customers. Here people generally switch pretty quickly to the informal tu when they get to know each other (at my first day at work with my colleagues and boss). But I’m quite an oddball since I use the formal address even for kids, which no one does. Also my neighbor was a bit annoyed at me for continuing to say vous to her after having met her one month ago. It can make people feel old.
Vousvouy-ing kids makes me feel whimsical, like Mary Poppins, so of course I do it too at times. 😅
Living in Quebec this is my own private little social anxiety nightmare when meeting new people. You want to talk about pronouns? This is the real pronouns issue. Do I go with tu and seem overly familiar? Do I go with vous and seem standoffish? Does it depend on age? Degrees of separation? Station in life? Nnnnnnnnnngggggghhhh
I always refer to someone by “vous” until I ask permission to “tutoyer”, unless they start referring to me with “tu”. It’s tricky to figure out when is the right moment to switch unless someone decides to switch for you. I much prefer English because of this.
How about in a uni class? My teacher uses ‘vous’ and ‘du’. That’s what prompted the question!
I speak French and German on a daily basis and German speaking people tend to use the du (or sometimes Du) more often than French speaking people. For both languages though, people tend to go more often with the informal forms in the rural areas and more with the formal form in the cities. This is for Switzerland and people in Germany or France may have slightly different habits.
Maybe your teacher uses vous not as a formal address to one student but rather to speak to the whole class? Or he/she respects some students more than others and uses vous to talk to them, in spite of the age difference.
The former is what I used to think, but I’ve been noticing she does it in one-on-one conversation as well, and as far as I can tell, that’s the case for everyone. Also, in written assignments, in the beginning, it would be, for example, ‘schreibe […]’ and is now ‘escrivez […]’
It’s also a uni class, so not all students are younger than the teacher.
Any adults I don’t know, older adults in my family including my friends’ parents (many don’t, I’m just a bit old fashioned, lol) and employees at work? Goes for both French and Spanish. 👍
I’ve literally never heard “您” in my entire life, except for like Chinese TV Drama or in a Chinese-Language class where the word is being taught.
That said, I’m not ever near politicians or bussiness people, just another “filthy peasant”.
Used in Mandarin speaking places. You is “你” ni 3rd tone, You (Formal) is “您” nin 2nd tone(?), the 您 character even has the 心 part to show how much “heart” you meant when you use that pronoun lol, its literlly 你 (you) + 心 (heart).
I don’t think Cantonese even has a formal “you”, everything is so colloquial and informal.
In Mexican Spanish, you would default to formal ‘you’ in most public interactions (although not all people do this). You would also use formal language when talking to a teacher or an authority.
- Formal ‘you’ (singular): usted
- Formal and informal ‘you’ (plural): ustedes
- Informal ‘you’ (singular): tú
Note that the informal and formal ‘you’ in plural are the same.
Fun fact: formal language in Spanish is more than just formal ‘you’.
E.g., if you’re working at a fancy shop and wanted to ask a customer “how may I help you?”, you would say “¿en qué le puedo ayudar?” (formal) instead of “¿en qué te puedo ayudar?” (informal). This question does not have ‘you’ in Spanish.
Formal and informal is not the same in plural.
“Ustedes” is formal, “vosotros” is informal. Although Mexicans (and many other south Americans) don’t use the informal version, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
Some countries also say “vos” for singular. I don’t know if that replaces “tú” or “usted” though.
In Amharic, spoken in Ethiopia, you use the the formal you in formal settings (mostly work or legal related matters) or when speaking to an elderly person. The informal you has variations for women and men but the formal you is gender neutral.
I could answer my own question, actually!
For reference, I’m in western austria, speaking German. The class I’m taking is A2 French.
My region is pretty different from most of the German speaking ‘world’. We use the formal you much less. The informal one is more or less th default, except:
You’re in secondary school. The teachers will use the informal one for students and the students have to use the formal one for most teachers. In high school, students can technically request that teachers use the formal you for them, but nobody does. I teach night school, and nobody used the formal you. Most of my students are very roughly around my age.
You’re seeing a doctor you don’t repeatedly go to, e.g. at the hospital. We use informal you for the specialists and GPs we see regularly, unless they’re ~60+.
You’re a bachelor’s student. Formal you for both students and professors. Unless the teacher is a masters or PhD student, then informal you both ways. Masters and PhD students tend to use informal you with professors and vice versa, but some professors will be the exception and there will be formal you both ways.
Court. Formal you, except between a lawyer and their client.
Some stuffy, old fashioned workplaces use formal you, but only between boss and employees, very very rarely between employees. If it’s some higher level management person you don’t usually work with, it’s more likely you’ll use formal you both ways.
Super specific, but 80+ year old people who’ve never lived outside a city will want kids to use formal you for them, but they’ll use the informal one for the kids.
German tourists. We’re aware that informal you is more common in Germany, and try to me courteous. Except those of us who hate tourists, lol.
That’s all the exceptions I can think of! For everyone else, including strangers (e.g. when asking for directions, cashiers, waiters, etc.) we use the informal one!
We use the formal you much less.
Informal you is more common in other places“The “you” we use here is neither formal nor informal, but a secret third thing.”
No but seriously, what did you mean to say? Germany make up roughly 8/10 German speakers, so “most of the German speaking world, except Germany” doesn’t really mean anything to me.
Like I said, I’m in Austria
That doesn’t change anything?
You said you use the formal you more than Germans, but less than the “German speaking world”. It’s a bit weird to use that phrase to mean “any German speakers except Germans” I think, especially in the way you wrote it.
Please reread my common. I said in my region, western austria, we use the formal you less than the rest of the German speaking world does.
Never. Norwegian, by the way.
Similar to German, the plural can be used as a formal version of singular (Du = Du, Sie = De).
But I’ve never used it outside of cases such as acting obnoxiously formal with friends. And I don’t think anyone else does either. Hundred years ago, maybe. Not today.
In Portuguese we use the formal “você” in a similar way to the French “vous”- for people you just met, people who are older, customers, etc. In some families (usually very traditional or conservative families) children will address parents and other elders by “você”. Then there’s another level where you address someone by their name or their title, usually reserved for people of a “higher rank” or a very formal setting, like “O senhor/a senhora conhece o Lemmy?”, or “O João gosta de memes?”
Slovenian uses the formal one for adults you are not personally connected to. So like strangers or people in positions that demand somw respect. Definitely used for people like teachers, professors, your SO’s parents…
There is also a half formal way of addressing people that I kinda hate and is also completely grammatically incorrect and I don’t really know how to explain the way it works. It can only be used in past and future tense (because the present does not have a modifier for the verb). So the first part of the verb is taken from the formal (plural) form of the verb and the second part is taken from the informal (singular) form.
In ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada): ನೀನು (neenu) is the informal you and ನೀವು (neevu) is the formal you.
Pretty much all verbs can be conjugated into formal and informal variants with varying levels of respect indicated. And a ton of words have spoken and written variants - but let’s not get into that now.
Ex for verbs:
-
“go”
- ಹೋಗಿ: hogi, gender neutral formal
- ಹೋಗು: hogu, gender neutral informal
- ಹೋಗೋ: hogo, male informal less respectful
- ಹೋಗೋಲೋ: hogolo, male disrespectful , almost like “fuck off dude”
-
“stand up” is ನಿಂತುಕೊ (ninthuko, informal) or ನಿಂತುಕೊಳ್ಳಿ (ninthukolli, formal) etc.
Where I’m from, we use the formal variants when talking to pretty much anyone. The informal version is mostly used if you’re talking to friends, toddlers, or cousins (of your own age). The other use case for the informal versions is if you want to insult someone without swearing at them or using the completely disrespectful variants.
Rules change from one city to the next though, and there are regions where using the informal variants is the norm. This leads to some extremely confusing situations - the first time my girl friend met my parents, she addressed them using the informal you and they were shocked (till I jumped in and clarified) as they thought she was dissing them, but it’s just how people spoke in the city where she grew up. 🤷♂️
What language is this?
Kannada
Thanks!
-
In Finnish, “sinä” is singular “you” and “te” is plural “you”. (sinä also has tons of variations in spoken language, including but not limited to: sä, sää, sie) Te is traditionally used as formal address both for authority and peers, but pretty rare nowadays. Nobody really uses it or any other formal address terms anymore, outside of certain very formal contexts, except reporters in interviews for some reason.
Technically English has this too but it’s not used outside of extremely formal situations. You = formal, Thou = informal.
In a weird twist, despite speaking Spanish, my particular dialect doesn’t have a formal you. We use usted for everyone. I joke that “usted es un malcriado puta de mierda” is a perfectly valid sentence
I also know French and that one does have a formal you, but it also doubles as the plural you so it’s a bit more common. It also has two different forms of we
Sanskrit, Marathi, and Hindi have formal and informal words to address someone. I think same is true for many other Indian languages.
