tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Feb 12 07:02:49 1995
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: "Bon appetit"
On Sat, 11 Feb 1995, Jeremy Cowan wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Jan 1995, ghor wrote:
> > ... 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?
Dost thou mean the Klingon mistake, or thine? In English "thou" is the 2d
person sg "formal". "You" is *informal* for first person. (At least that
is the current English usage, which I trust thou art using.)
For those who didn't take History of English as an elective, English used
to have a full set of 2d person pronouns as follows:
sg nom acc gen(poss) pl nom acc gen(poss)
thou thee thy/thine ye you your/yours
I'm always more fascinated by how the accusative(objective) plural
pronoun "you" overtook the nominative "ye". Seems we ought all to be
using ye today. Must have been the similarity to "yea/yes" that
destroyed it. Of course in the Southern US, we've evolved the separation
of you again, which ought look like this:
sg nom/acc gen(poss) pl nom/acc gen(poss)
you your/yours yau yause
Every good Southerner drops final "l" in favor of a u-glide... so "yau"
is a more appropriate spelling. Maybe "yaw" would be better.... but
that's a word. :-)
<[email protected]> >1 910 759 5532, fax -6142< "Pardon me, but if I must
David E G Sturm, Laboratory Manager operate in a vacuum, can
Wake Forest University Department of Physics I at least have a little
Box 7507 Reynolda Station, Winston-Salem NC 27109 ether to calm my nerves?"