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.
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!
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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.
Russian here.
I use the formal “You” when talking to adults I don’t know well and in official conversations. Also, with superiors.
I use the informal “you” with friends and family, and with colleagues I know well. Informal “you” also communicates warmth, safety, a call to action, or authority, which is why it may be used when addressing children (particularly preteens), people in danger, or someone else you need to either influence or make feel safe, or both.
Of course there are millions of exceptions, and everyone keeps it slightly different. For this reason, it is common for people to have hard time figuring whether to address certain people by formal or informal “you”. Mistakenly using the formal option can be read as creating more distance, the informal - as invading the personal space. It’s an issue in spoken conversations, too, as these forms are actually two different words that are audibly different.
Tagalog. I lived with my ex-wife and her family for years. The more people in the house, the happier Mom was. They all spoke Tagalog. One day I heard my brother-in-law speaking to someone on the phone and it sounded much different. I asked him why and the call and he said he was speaking formally.
Hopefully someone can explain better.
In Filipino/Tagalog, you = “ikaw” (or “ka”, depending on the way the sentence is structured) which is okay to use for peers or younger people. For older people or people of higher positions, we address them with the “plural you” = “kayo”. We also add “po” when speaking politely/respectfully.
For example:
“Nasaan ka?” = “Where are you?”
“Nasaan po kayo?” = “Where are you?” (respectfully)
Listening to my wife speak Tagalog to family and friends gets me. Spanish! Out of nowhere!
LOL. Zapatos (shoes), left, right, straight, and chisme (gossip) are a few I remember.
For Spanish, I pretty much only use it with customers at work, and nice, elderly people. I guess I would use it if I were in a court for something in Spanish, but otherwise, I don’t really use it at all.
Which country are you from?
In Turkish we have plural version of you called Siz which can be used both adressing multiple people and as formal you. There are no pronunciation differences so it depends on the context. (e.g. Sizin sınıfınız iyi. uses it as plural, Sizi bir yerden gözüm ısırıyor. uses is as formal you)
Spanish has a plural formal form as well, but it’s only used as such in Spain. “Ustedes” (the informal one is “vosotros”.)
In the rest of the Spanish speaking world, that formal form is used in both formal and informal contexts. So non-Spaniards have that one fact with common with Turkish people. Neat!
Czech (and Slovak, mostly also Polish) use formal/informal you similar to German or French. (At least from my limited understanding of those.)
Formal: High schools, universities, work environment, courts, etc. You also use it when you’re speaking with older people or when you want to show respect to person you’re talking to.
Informal: Everywhere else. It is also used when you want to indirectly insult person where formal should be used.
Life hack: You can use informal absolutely everywhere when you’re old (even when it’d be very disrespectful otherwise) and nobody gives a shit.
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.
Japanese has many ways to say “you”. It’s weird because indirectness can be more polite, so a formal way of saying “you” in context in a sentence might not include any words that would translate to “you” in the dictionary. And the subject is optional, just to make things extra fun.
The other question, about casual ways to say “you”, is easier to answer… It depends on the dialect and where you’re from in Japan.
Can you give examples, please?
Examples of what? Dropping the “you” in the sentence all together, or the casual ways to say “you”?
Regarding dropping it, it’s very common to drop the “I” or the “you” in regular speaking, as it’s assumed. Verb conjugation has a lot more power in Japanese, and you designate questions separately, which clears up most of the confusion. In English, “Go to the store” can either be a command or a statement (if you add “I will” at the front). In Japanese, this is explained in the conjugation of the verb. The subject thus becomes superfluous, and is dropped in everyday speech.
There’s a ton of different ways to say both “I” and “you” in Japanese, and can depend on gender, closeness, and situation. The four most common forms of “you” are to say the person’s name + さん (san), あなた (anata) which is rather generic but is odd to use too much especially if you know the person’s name, 君 (kimi) for people who know each other well (slightly masculine), and お前 (omae) which is so informal it can be crass, like calling a stranger “bro” in English.
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
Technically English has this too but it’s not used outside of extremely formal situations. You = formal, Thou = informal.
I’m certain there is no situation like that. It’s just a dead part of the language. Most native speakers don’t even know how to use it properly when imitating old-timey speech.
Quakers use “thee/thou” sometimes, but only because the movement has been around since just before the end of the shift to “you” for everything, and it’s fossilised in as a result. There’s a few weird British Isles dialects that preserve it too, but they’re not widespread.
It’s archaic. I can’t really imagine a situation in which we’d use “thou” today for formality reasons. If you say “thou” , you’re pretending to be someone from hundreds of years ago or you’re quoting the King James Bible or something that is hundreds of years old.
I think a more-reasonable division between formality and informality would be whether or not one uses a title like “sir” today.
Sir is not a grammatical person. You/Thou are, however. That’s the difference.
For Hindi speakers, it varies from region to region. For some everyone except close friends get the honorific ‘you’, for some you’ve got to be minimum two generations older.
Punjabi tu
Everyone thinks in terms of america but in england you is the formal version of you.
It’s thou and thee, innit.
no its cunt.
Thought that was used in Australia
well its common in several commonwealth areas.
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.
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.
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.)
Except thou in “thou shalt not kill” is the singular pronoun, while you is the plural…
I have no idea what number was implied in the original 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!
“No murders, y’all”
Omg, that’s too funny!
“No ogling at your peeps’ wives, c’mon you dum-dums!”
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. OP got the premise a bit wrong, for one thing. And usually it was other poor people that did the sanctioned killing, anyway - it’s dirty unpleasant work that a king would have avoided in the Early Modern period.
I recently (re?)learned that “you” was the plural form and only became a formal form under the influence of French.
Basically, “you” was “ye”/“y’all”/“youse”/“yins” before any of those existed, and the others only came into existence when “you” became formal and stopped filling that niche.
And some dialects, including some very populous ones like standard British English, still don’t have a plural “you” as a result of that change of usage. The subsequent shift to being generic only cemented the problem.
“You” regains its plurality in things like “all of you”, “you all”, “you lot” (not really for the politest of company) and “you <number>” (e.g. “You four, go sit over there”) for a group of people, but on its own it’s ambiguous.
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