tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 13 13:39:09 1995
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Re: "Bon appetit"
On Mon, 13 Feb 1995, William H. Martin wrote:
> According to David E G Sturm:
> > 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
Right. You don't see it, because it's not really an English feature.
> 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
What you are describing as "familiar" is identical with "informal".
Polite is identical with formal.
> So, I would expect that Okrand's utterance was a simple error,
> since we have the suffix {-oy} to express this
> familiar/intimate sense.
Again, it may have been an "error", yet I expect he would, if asked,
explain that Maltz told him the expression derives from a general
greeting given by the leader of the hunt when the kill was brought back
to the village to be dined upon.... literally "All of you, eat well!"
> > I'm always more fascinated by how the accusative(objective) plural
> > pronoun "you" overtook the nominative "ye".
>
> Fascinated? Really?
Me is really fascinated by it. I think us all are fascinated? At least
it's what him and her told I....
There aren't many examples of objective case forms supplanting
nominatives in English. Usually it was the inflected objective case
forms that are completely gone in English.
> 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!
Well! Moi doesn't agree with that... :-) I'm not sure about vous being
around that much. Sure in borrowed phrases, RSVP, etc...
> > Must have been the similarity to "yea/yes" that
> > destroyed it.
>
> More likely the dissimilarity with "vous".
Actually, a lot of backwoods Southerners umlaut the /u/ in you so much
that it almost sounds like "ye" again... Especially in the construction
"you can do what you want"....
> > 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.
You're right on track with that. It's humorous hearing Hollywood types
drawl out the y'alls and completely *miss* affecting all the other l's
too. I hear a lot of the "Y'all are" construction around these parts,
and I'd swear it's getting close to sounding like "Y'aw're"--that is to
say the words *are* smashed together. Indeed, there often is an affect
similar to French liaison with -t- and final -s in effect here.
I heard my six-year old say "I saw-l-it." She's immersed in native
Carolinian folk, so one can see that a hypercorrection is operating,
exactly like the excellent comparison you've made to French... Y a-t-il?
This is very interesting regarding the Klingon glottal stop... Was
actually an "ur-consonant" or did it evolve similarly? Only Maltz knows.