tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Feb 11 19:32:39 1995

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: "Bon appetit"

I was going through some old messages and found this one.

On Sat, 14 Jan 1995, ghor wrote:

> [On CK, they say] "Bon appetit, Terran". I hear
> it as "peSop, tera'ngan".
> 
> ... I came to think that in my language [Finnish] it indeed IS considered 
> polite to address a respectable person formally in the plural second 
> person...  Perhaps the story behind this (fictionally, of course) is that
> they borrowed a little something from the Terran languages because
> tourists like to be treated kindly. I'd have expected them to 
> borrow from DIvI' Hol, though ...

Almost every natural language I have studied uses the second person plural 
for the second person singular formal.  It seems a popular thing to do.  
And what makes you say that DIvI' Hol doesn't use it.  When (in English) I 
want a second person singular formal I certainly use the pronoun for 
second person plural.  :)

Does someone have a grammar explanation for this apparent mistake?

janSIy  }}:+D>

Back to archive top level