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.

  • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    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.)

    • fprawn@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      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”.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      13 hours ago

      Except “thou” in “thou shalt not kill” is the singular pronoun, while “you” would be the plural…

      I have no idea what number was implied in the original Hebrew.

    • Windex007@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Well, maybe. If thou is for peasants, then the implication the commandments are directed specifically at the non-royal?

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        13 hours ago

        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.