If you speak a language that has a formal 'you', when do you use it?
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.
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.
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”.
"No murders, y'all"
Omg, that's too funny!
"No ogling at your peeps' wives, c'mon you dum-dums!"
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.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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
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
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.
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. 👍
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.
Dutch is now my main language. I rarely, almost never, use the formal "U" or "Uw". It's an archaic thing.
I notice it's still in use in government communication. I also notice it in (older) literature.
I choose to believe UwU is extra formal
I'm also Dutch and I still occasionally use it when I want to be polite to an older person I do not know very well, or to someone who is in a position where I want to show a certain form of "respect" (higher social standing?)
That is probably also why the government uses "u" in its communication. It is proper to be seen as being respectful to your citizens. And saying "jij" after "u" is less likely to offend anyone than saying "u" after "jij"
The rules are a bit vague when you are supposed to use it, and most people will go "zeg maar jij hoor" (you can say [informal] you) after you start with "u" (formal you)
In my experience many small businesses use it in written communication. Even if you just had an informal phone conversation with them, they will follow up with a formal email. GPs do it too in online written consults. I find it slightly annoying, because it forces me to consider doing the same, which I rarely do otherwise.
Sometimes younger people (strangers) address me in the formal form, even though I’m in my 30s.
Big companies usually use the informal form in their communication.
Big companies using the informal you in formal communication can be seen as a way to try to make themselves feel smaller, more approachable, more person-like than they actually are.
I'm not saying that is necessarily the reason behind it, but formal or informal you do invoke different feelings and associations when they are used.
Formal you (u) shows respect, whereas informal you (jij) is more personal and buddy-buddy.
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.
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.
In Portuguese we use the formal "você" in a similar way to the French "vous"- for people you just met, people who are older, customers, etc. In some families (usually very traditional or conservative families) children will address parents and other elders by "você". Then there's another level where you address someone by their name or their title, usually reserved for people of a "higher rank" or a very formal setting, like "O senhor/a senhora conhece o Lemmy?", or "O João gosta de memes?"
I would think this needs the regional classification. There are big chunks of Brazil where tu may as well not exist as a pronoun. I also wouldn't necessarily say that addressing someone by their name would be universally taken as a sign of respect. Plenty of people will just use names like that in informal speech, like "Você não vai acreditar o que falou o João ontem."
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 :(
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.
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.
Never. Norwegian, by the way.
Similar to German, the plural can be used as a formal version of singular (Du = Du, Sie = De).
But I've never used it outside of cases such as acting obnoxiously formal with friends. And I don't think anyone else does either. Hundred years ago, maybe. Not today.
Back when I was at uni I had a fellow student from England who complained about the formal you in German. It took him to start learning Japanese to realize it's really not that bad. In German it used to be that you say Sie to any adult-looking person until you both agreed to use du. At work this is a lot more relaxed now with entire companies stating everybody used du. Makes it much easier and nicer, in my opinion.
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?
Greek: formal you is usually used with older people (but not family), teachers when you are a student or higher ups in general. Wherever I've worked we used the informal form but I don't know how common this is. Also retail workers typically use the formal form with customers so I do the same with them but many people do not. It seems to be slowly going away as a feature.
Spanish: I'd use the formal a bit less than in greek but it depends on location. In Spain it seems pretty rare but some central and south American countries use it much more.
Funny thing is, in Dutch, I feel it is way more common that people correct you for using a formal form than the other way around.
In like a "oh please, sir was my father, call me Dave" kind of way? Or a "hey man this really isn't appropriate in this situation" kind of way?
Yeah no, more like the former.
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.
In Finnish, we have a formal 'you', but it's kind of archaic and I there aren't really any situations where it should be used. In general, you should avoid formal speech. It's rarely used and sticks out, so instead of being polite it might even make you sound sarcastic.
Coming from that culture, German 'sie' felt awkward at first. It feels pointless, but at the same time quirks like this also make cultures more interesting. I remember this meme video where a guy insults a cop while addressing him with 'du', but as the cop turns towards him, he quickly corrects it with 'sie', making the insult 100 times better. That just wouldn't work here.
In English, I use it all the time because 'thou' has been dropped.
I remember this meme video where a guy insults a cop while addressing him with ‘du’, but as the cop turns towards him, he quickly corrects it with ‘sie’, making the insult 100 times better.
I think they're asking, not just turning around.
The joke being that they're asking politeness form while retaining the insult. IMO the asking adds impact over just turning around, because the officer is offering a chance to pull back.
In Spain it is normally used with elderly people (less and less, people get offended and think that "you call them old" or something like that when you use it) and in very formal situations, especially at work.
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:
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. 🤷♂️
I don't think I've ever seen a comprehensive explanation when to use "Sie" over "du" in German. Very, VERY basically it's this: if you're close to the other person, it's "du", otherwise "Sie". And then there's a gazillion constellations where it's not that easy and it seems learners keep finding more cases where what they learnt isn't applicable. Most of these are intuitive to native German speakers, some are difficult to decide even for us.
Not that I think German is special in this. The correct way to address someone is less about language rules that you can memorise, more something you learn to intuit by getting to know the intricacies of the culture and its social mores.
Regarding your language teacher: what are those two languages? They may have different rules on how a teacher/student relationship works.
I'm in Austria speaking German and I'm learning French. Our rules for 'du' are very different from the ones in Germany though, and vary wildly regionally- from using 'Sie' for your drinking buddies to using 'du' for authority figures. From what I gather in this thread, the rules in Germany and France are similar?
I speak Spanish, and use the formal pronoun when in any formal situation, eg. addressing a stranger.
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.
Das geht Sie gar nichts an!
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.
Sanskrit, Marathi, and Hindi have formal and informal words to address someone. I think same is true for many other Indian languages.
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
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!
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