Don't Get Familiar with Me!

Like many students know, English has only one 2nd person way of addressing people, both singular and plural: you. But what does this word mean?

Well, as it so happens, many languages have both a familiar and a formal term to use when addressing others:

*Brazilian Portuguese has nearly totally lost all trace of the familiar tu to standardize the você form for both formal and familiar, with the plural being vocês.

English, contrary to the above languages but like other languages such as Brazilian Portuguese, no longer makes a difference between formal and familiar.

Did you catch that adverbial? "No longer." This means that English did indeed at one point have a different 2nd person. English kept the formal way of addressing others you and lost the familiar! You might think this odd, but actually it is quite common: on the French island of Réunion in the south Indian Ocean near Madagascar, the local creole spoken all over the island tends to prefer the formal vous for all uses in the singular, creating a periphrastic pronoun vou z'autres for the plural.

Many students, when reading Shakespeare or other authors before the 1830-1850 period when our modern English actually became contemporary, have encountered the familiar pronoun already:

You pronounce thou using the same /th/ phoneme as in the or those and the /ou/ diphthong is pronounced as /ow/ in cow. It is accompanied by a full set of both declensions and conjugations:

So now when Hamlet, in Act 3, Scene 1, says to Ophelia, "Get thee to a nunnery," only the final word will pose problems (nunnery = a convent).

* * * * *

Today, use of this term has disappeared. The only places -- besides Shakespeare, Marlowe and other authors or the Bible -- that you would be able to hear it being used would be religious communities like the Quakers, who pride themselves in keeping long-past traditions, or else in Appalachia in the United States, which has retained previous usages purely out of isolation. However, with the strong influence of television and the media, it is very likely that even there the word will disappear, if it hasn't already disappeared.

Comments

Irregular Verbs in Context 1

Do you have this look of sheer terror on your face when you think about irregular verbs? Oh come on, they're not that bad, are they? Chances are, you've been memorizing them in a list where you almost have to recite the three mutations (conjugations) to be able to use the second one or the third one. This is an acceptable method if you are able to use the three without hesitating too much. And if you have a lot of time to recite the three forms of the verb each time you need to use one. However, there are better ways. Contextualization is the key, in my opinion. Below is a first series of irregular verbs in different sentences, including sentences (answers) that you will need to construct. Take the time to go through them and really do them, i.e. thinking about each answer. Take as much time as you need before checking the answers which will be at the bottom of the page ... eventually. Then, once you have finished t...

Bab Mansour Gate in Meknès, Morocco Hi all. Well, it happens: the end of the semester, entrance exams, finals and their subsequent corrections, calculating grades, translations of academic research articles (I'm working on one parallel to this blog post...), and all after having gone through some pretty heavy personal changes this winter -- most for the best, thankfully -- all means that I needed to take some time off. Hence , Morocco and for nearly 3 weeks*. Vacation (US) or holidays (GB) are a crucial necessity and allow one to take a break from one's everyday and occasionally humdrum routine and think about other things: sights, sounds, smells, all of the senses are called into play in beautiful Morocco. Medersa Bou Inania, Fez, Morocco The country remains challenging for the Westernly minded, and in fact if you go there one day, it's best just to drop all of your preconceived notions of how life "should be," and accept the fact that ...

More words and where they're from

Brat So now I turn to one of my father's favorite words, which says a lot for my brothers, my sister and myself -- brat . A brat is basically a bad child, and according to the Collins Dictionary etymologicial listings comes to us from the O.E. bratt , a poor child's piece of clothing, which in turn is from the Celtic brat meaning a piece of cloth one wore just to cover the body. I shouldn't really mention that I'm referring to my students when I think of this word, but suddenly it just popped into my head. A brat , and especially the stronger spoiled brat , is an obnoxious, misbehaving child who demands things -- notably attention -- and whose behavior is far from decorous. Perfect examples of brats , including the spoiled variety, would be Justin Bieber*, Paris Hilton*, any of the Kardashians*, most professional soccer players* here in Europe, and of course One Direction*. All you want to do is slap them across the face and send them packing or m...

Learning American English

Search This Blog