People who only speak english will never understand the struggle of not knowing if you have to call someone the ‘formal you’ or...
People who only speak english will never understand the struggle of not knowing if you have to call someone the ‘formal you’ or the ‘informal you’
considering a majority of native english speakers don’t even know the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re,’ it’s probably for the best that the language isn’t made any more complicated than it is
Lmfao the shade
💅🏼
“Thou” used to be equivalent to the informal “you” as per the Spanish example– actually this very distinction came about thanks to the elite dominance of the related Norman language following William the Conqueror, uh, conquering England – but it was eventually regarded as too impolite to use in general and the more regarded-as-polite “you” replaced it for everything.
So really, English as a language was rather ahead in social advancement compared to many other languages, and it’s worth noting this in light of throwing off literal linguistic oppression as is supposedly the trend these days.
NERD
Just kidding :P
But in all honesty I hate the “formal” and “informal” versions of you/them. Especially if they’re family but you don’t know them and you want to make a good impression! Although this is just from my experience :/
Hey, that’s an easy excuse for formal, although you’re talking to someone naturally prissy about these things.
It could be worse. IIRC Japanese has a verb tense exclusively for speaking to the Emperor of Japan. (@kontextmaschine isn’t that true?)
I think so, but it’s not something they taught us. I remember that words could be marked on distinct formal-informal, superior-inferior AND ingroup-outgroup axes though