tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 13 10:58:15 1995
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Re: "Bon appetit"
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: "Bon appetit"
- Date: Mon, 13 Feb 95 13:58:12 EST
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "David E G Sturm" at Feb 12, 95 10:18 am
As one who has been repeatedly corrected for correcting others
incorrectly, I feel compelled to share that experience with
others who err while pointing out the errors of others...
According to David E G Sturm:
>
> On Sat, 11 Feb 1995, Jeremy Cowan wrote:
> >
> > 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...
Oh? I always thought it was SECOND 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 don't see anything here about formal or informal. As for
current usage, nobody currently uses thou, thee or thine
anymore except perhaps for some religious groups who continue
to shun the pretensions of pluralizing the second person. For
them, rather than formal/informal the division seems to be more
like the current French useage where what was once a singular
form is now a "familiar" or "intimate" form. It's useage has
less to do with formality or the lack thereof than it does as a
statement of familiarity. Mothers and their children may use
the singular form among themselves (while fathers often reserve
it for wives or lovers). Dear friends might use it, if they
wished to make a point about the degree of trust and intimacy
they have for one another.
Everybody else gets pluralized.
So, I would expect that Okrand's utterance was a simple error,
since we have the suffix {-oy} to express this
familiar/intimate sense.
> I'm always more fascinated by how the accusative(objective) plural
> pronoun "you" overtook the nominative "ye".
Fascinated? Really?
> Seems we ought all to be
> using ye today.
Could it perhaps be related to the Restoration when this whole
change happened? The French instigated the whole thing. Along
with forks and hard liquor, they gave the Britts the idea that
it was cool to pluralize the second person. Meanwhile, "you"
sounds a lot like "vous" and there is no French second person
pronoun that sounds anything like "ye". During the restoration,
Britts often tried to throw snippets of "continental" (French)
culture and language into their conversations, probably using
"vous" as often as "you" or "ye" for a time. *lu'I'* wa'maH
loSDIch. toDSaH!
> Must have been the similarity to "yea/yes" that
> destroyed it.
More likely the dissimilarity with "vous".
> 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. :-)
I don't know. This is a good observation, but slightly
exaggerated. The "l" is still (sort of sometimes) pronounced,
though it is nearly silent and quite brief after a lengthy
u-glide. If one really wanted to pass for a southerner, you'd
have to work on this.
Consider this:
"Y'all are always welcome." Without the "l", we have either a
glottal stop or the first two words smashed together. Like the
final "s" in many French words, the "l" is silent (or nearly
silent) except when followed by a word opening with a vowel.
The example sounds like, "Yau lah 'auways weuhcum." That last
word is particularly difficult for non-southerners to fake.
> <[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?"
charghwI', southern, rock climbing, Klingon bass player, esq.
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