Here is a good one for all of us Americans. Most Americans speak only one language, and some only half a one.
One of my good childhood friends, who is a German, but teaches Latin and French (note there is no English in that list) recently gave me an English lesson. I pride myself on my strong English and large vocabulary, but his comments have given me pause.
He read my post about Freud and America and noticed that I talked about egalitarianism and how it is built into our language. He promptly challenged me about the use of “you” to address everyone, formal and informal. His lesson is so profound, I decided to repeat it here:
As a Latin and French teacher I am per se interested in language history. When I read Norbert’s commentary on Freud’s attitude to the USA, I remembered learning a long time ago that the English word you is actually a plural: you “are”. But I had forgotten the details. Here is what I found:
You and ye used to be the plural forms of the second person pronoun.
You was the accusative form, and ye was the nominative form.
Because of this, you still conjugates verbs in the plural form even when it is singular; that is, you are is correct even if you is only referring to one person.
Thee and thou used to be the singular forms.
Thou was the nominative form, and thee was the accusative form.
You is the plural.
Thou is the singular form of you.
Thou has now disappeared from common use and is used only to address God. The process resulting in the use of the singular pronoun to express intimacy and the plural pronoun to mark respect or social distance is termed
T-V_distinction, after the Latin tu and vos and is found is many languages, especially of the Proto Indo European family tree.
See for instance, in addition to the Latin form above:
French: tu => vous
German: du => ihr (2nd person plural) or sie (3rd person plural)
Even some languages that seem not to comply exactly (because they don’t seem to use the 2nd-person plural) actually hide a form a compliance.
Spanish: tu => vos (vos is still used in Argentina instead of tú, and used to be a more formal form of tú)
Italian used to use voi (2nd person plural).
Italian now uses “Lei” (3rd feminine person, singular) as a courtesy form. “Voi” (2nd plural) sounds now archaic and, when used, expresses even more social distance than “Lei”. (that is, you’d use it for a king, pretty much nothing less). Why lei, who is the third person singularly feminine?
The use of Lei (lit.: She) as a form of respect goes back to the XVII-XVIII century, when it was common not to address somebody important directly, but to use abstract forms such as la Signoria Vostra. E.g. “Cosa pensa la Signoria Vostra di quest’opera?” that is: “What does Your Lordship think of this opera?” or “La Signoria Vostra desidera un caffè?” that is: “Would Your Lordship like a coffee?”.
As you can see from these examples, the sentence is constructed in the third person singular, and because titles like signoria (lordship), maestà (majesty), altezza (highness), etc. are all feminine, this explains the use of the feminine pronoun Lei (she). There are some wonderful examples of the usage of these titles in the comedies written by Carlo Goldoni, the famous Venetian play writer.
All in all, English has pushed T-V distinction so far that thou is not used anymore in common speak.
Puzzled, I then asked what the singular form for “your” was and he promptly replied:
before a noun beginning with a consonant:
thy goodness and mercy
before an initial vowel:
the first rule of warfare: know thine enemy
And there it is: This English speaker (and snob at it) just got an English lesson from a German Latin and French teacher.
But my Japanese is better than yours — na na na na na na!
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