Quote:
Originally Posted by ebacon
This is in the "when you change the language you think in then your thoughts change" department.
I am in the first sentences of learning Italian. One of the first things that hit me is the similarity that Italian has with German when it comes to addressing people: Sie vs. Du. The Italian equivalents escape me at the moment. I am writing off the cuff.
Does English have such a formality? I am from the Mr vs. Dude level of simple vocabulary, but I know that is of different tones.
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French has Vous vs. Tu as well. I suppose this
could be due to the strong Frankish influence on German and French but I don't know. Since the Franks ran the Holy Roman Empire for a while, that same Frankish influence could have informed modern Italian too.
Anyway, I don't think the ancestry of the English language, which is predominantly Celtish, Saxon and old Norse, produced a similar differentiation between formal and familiar forms of address.
John