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.
Punjabi tu
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.
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!
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?
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”.
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.
Well, maybe. If thou is for peasants, then the implication the commandments are directed specifically at the non-royal?
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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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.
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.
I live in Japan, and of course there are formal ways to say everything, but in formal and polite situations, people actually try to avoid saying ‘you’ (anata, 貴方) as much as possible. Because even that can feel too personal. I only see it in writing that addresses the reader indirectly, like in surveys.
If you do address or refer to them, you typically use their title/position (e.g., ‘sensei’ for doctors and teachers, ‘Mr. President’), or name and appropriate honorific (e.g., Tanaka-san).
P.S., a lot of what might’ve been archaically formal and polite ways to say ‘you’ have become ironically rude and/or condescending. Like, ‘KISAMA!’ (貴様), kimi (君) (sovereign/lord), onushi (お主) (lord).
a lot of what might’ve been archaically formal and polite ways to say ‘you’ have become ironically rude and/or condescending.
You can do something similar in English through sarcastic statements with inappropriately polite forms of address. e.g. saying “Well, excuse me, sire!” to someone with a sassy tone of voice should be interpreted as “I’m offended” or “I can’t believe you just did that, you asshole” or similar depending on context.
Yes this! With my family and friends I don’t think I’ve ever used anata. It feels almost as confrontational to me as the actual formal ways
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.
Isn’t te/le technically a conjugation of you though? You also have to conjugate the verb but at least the difference is just an ‘s’ that you can aspirate enough that it’s not clear if you’re going for tu or usted.
Perhaps you are right. Unfortunately I’ve forgotten lots of the linguistics of Spanish :(
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.
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
Vousvouy-ing kids makes me feel whimsical, like Mary Poppins, so of course I do it too at times. 😅
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. 👍
Traditional spanish has a formal you (usted/ustedes), however Argentinian Spanish, which is the version that I’m most familiar with mostly uses vos instead of usted and tu, and doesn’t typically differentiate between formal and informal
Also in traditional Spanish, the formal you (usted/ustedes) goes with the verb in the third person conjugation. I mention it because pronouns are often skipped.
I speak Spanish, and use the formal pronoun when in any formal situation, eg. addressing a stranger.
I speak Italian, German, and French. The rules for when to use the formal address are complex, differ from language to language, and are changing every day.
The formal address is largely deferential. You invoke it both to imply status and emotional/social distance. That’s the common thread I noticed in these three languages. Italians being more informal, you end up using the informal address with a lot more people; German society is more formal and you keep your distance even from people (like coworkers) that you have known for a long time.
But I would say that in all three of these languages, formality is becoming more and more infrequent. I think this is illustrated very well by the way media and web sites address users and visitors, which is going quickly from the formal form to the informal.
There seems to be also an influence from English, which has no formal address. I notice that in dubbed media, like movies and TV shows, that frequently don’t really know what to do with the different forms available in the context of source material that doesn’t have it. Sometimes it’s amusing, like the scene where Captain America (I think) used the informal address to his superiors, which would have been absolutely insulting for a military officer, akin to calling them “bro” in English.
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.
Are you living above 1000m height?
Haha close, 950 commuting down to 600. But it’s the same down there in the city. Most of my social contacts as well as my work are there, anyway!
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.
