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Originally posted by Sazerac:
[B]
In German, there is the familiar "du" and the impersonal "de", and in Spanish, there is the familiar "tu'" and the impersonal "usted". I'm not familiar with French or Italian, but I'm sure that they use a similar convention. (I know the French familiar "vous" but that's about as far as it goes for me.)
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Um...actually I have no idea what your information source is, but in German, the distinction is made between 'Du' and 'Sie' (not 'de'). As in Russian, 'Sie' (but without the capital) is also used for the plural. The French version, as Moiraine said, is tu/vous. In Holland, we use 'jij' or 'jou' as a familiar form and 'u' as a respectful term. 'U' is used for people who are older or higher on the social ladder. In most companies nowadays, it's now normal to address everybody with the familiar form, so that I call the highest manager by her first name, and use 'jij' instead of 'u'.
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Having grown up in the American culture, I find the use of the formal 3rd person address distasteful, and slightly disrespectful...to speak to a human being directly in the 3rd person as if they were a chair, or a pizza. Perhaps I have got the wrong end of the stick here, as it were, but that's how it seems to me, and that may be due to my particular cultural heritage, which thrives on familiarity. In my historical and literary studies, I have read instances in which, for example, two friends who had been so for over forty years broke company because one dared to address the other with the "du" form of address rather than the "de" form. (In Denmark, and it was the 19th century, to give you the time perspective.) I don't think I would want to be friends with someone who took that degree of umbrage over what seems to me to be a mere trifle of semantics.
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Um...I think it goes without saying that these conventions are now much more relaxed...doh. I don't know, again, where you got your information but it should be fairly obvious that nowadays, we don't break off 40 years of friendship over this... I don't agree at all that using 'u' or 'vous' or 'Sie' is distasteful, and what you are saying about calling someone the same as a chair or dog is of course nonsense, as both forms are totally different. You are confusing the third person with the 'impersonal', but they are not the same (eg in Dutch, the third person is hij/zij/het, not 'u' and in German there's er/sie/es, which is different from 'Sie'). It is not perceived at all as addressing someone as an object or anything.
Your example, you say, is from the nineteenth century, which should indicate that matters have changed over the years. If you showed some ankle in those days you'd be frowned upon, and calling the King 'old chap' wouldn't be a good idea either......what I'm saying is, it was just a rule of courtesy, nothing more.Personally I think the fact that you can decide between the two forms adds to the richness of the language, and while it may cause some embarrassment sometimes (though this is hardly ever the case in Dutch, as the conventions are pretty easy to grasp, and if in doubt, you can always mumble
) I really like the use of the two different forms of addressal.
Hope this sheds some light on the matter, at least from the Dutch perspective
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