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Comment by propter_hoc | Hacker News Reader

Second person pronouns are so fascinating!

Not only is "you" the formal, polite plural form, but calling someone "thou" was also seen as so informal as to be rude (in verb form, to "thou" someone). This has a modern equivalent in the term "tutoyer" in French.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/thou

An interesting counterpoint is the usage in Japanese of sarcastically polite forms like お前 and 貴様, where you use a pronoun with a surface meaning of extreme respect, as a form of insult.

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Shipmate is used to describe someone who you crew a ship with, such as in the navy, and is supposed to convey comradery. E xcept in its real world use, where its the social equivalent of referring to someone as "s**head".

I guess like "comrade", any kind of imposed social norm becomes an object of satire?

I think so, I remember a joke bill burr made about any term used to describe the mentally underdeveloped will inevitably be used satirically.

Interesting. I wonder if the similarity of the words "ship" and "shit" contributed to the development. Out of curiosity, what is the non-pejorative replacement for shipmate?

Just common english slang, bro, dude, whatevers on their nametag or a first name/nickname if they have one; nothing dissimilar to civilian life and I think thats largely the point, even last names are commonly referred to as "slave names". Formal speech is all ranks, "hey chief", "yes petty officer".

There seems to be a certain amount of "euphemism treadmill" in Japanese pronouns, where they start off polite and drift downward in acceptability to be replaced by new ones. I have a grammar book from 1906 ("Hossfeld’s Japanese Grammar") which effectively documents some of that drift: for second person pronouns, apparently you could still get away with “addressing inferiors familiarly” with ‘kisama’ in 1906, so it hadn't yet dropped to the insult level it has now. ‘nushi’ is also listed, glossed ‘contemptuous’, and I don't think anybody uses 'nushi' as an insult today. ‘Anata’ and ‘omae’ are the 1906 recommended pronouns.

Korean also suffers from similar issues, where it's a bit more ridiculous: the textbook version of "polite" 2nd singular pronoun ("dangsin") has fallen so low that it's pretty much an insult now, and no other term has taken its place. As a result, modern Korean arguably does not have a polite 2nd person singular pronoun.

We somehow make do - it helps that Korean allows just omitting pronoun when the context is clear (same as Japanese).

主(nushi) has wrapped back around to being more on the polite side, though I get the impression it's used more by older people. There's also phrases like 持ち主(mochi-nushi -- person who is a holder of something) that have ossified the pronoun so it probably won't go away entirely for a while.

I think the reason for the rotation of pronouns is because people start using them sarcastically which means it's no longer seen as respectful, and so new pronouns become necessary.

Interestingly the formality ladder flips at the very top of the hierarchy. Kings and popes must be addressed diffusely with plurals and layered references to official status (“Your Imperial Majesty”), but the Christian God above them is a “thou” in every European language.

(Useless trivia bit… Apparently Emperor Charles V invented the styling of “His Majesty”. Before him, kings and emperors were addressed as highnesses, but he wanted something fancier after being crowned as the Holy Roman Emperor in addition to the kingships he already held.)

That's because the english notion of informal/formal is a poor fit for the modern, symmetric use of T-V.

It's more of a social distance, with V-form for people outside the personal sphere, and T-form for people outside the public sphere.

So, as an atheist, I'd use V-form* with the Christian God, but His Believers really ought to be using T-form with Him.

* Si vous plaît, j'aimerais bien savior comment fonctionne la turbulence ... mais ne vous inquiétez pas si l'explication serait trop compliqué !

La turbulence ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence#Kolmogorov's_theory...

(but the way I heard the joke is that the scientist has planned to ask Him how to resolve gravitation with quantum mechanics, and only then the bystanders inquire, why not ask about turbulence?)

> Kings and popes must be addressed diffusely with plurals

So I guess "the royal 'We'" falls under "believing your own marketing".

That’s fascinating. In Bangla, “thui” is the very informal second person pronoun (like what am older sibling would say to a younger sibling).

See also https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/yeten#Middle_English (Etymology 2), where ye (and yeet[!]) were its descendants (to ye someone was a thing as well)

The US south still uses ma’am and sir as polite forms of address, but it’s also often used sarcastically (where the ma’am or sir is exaggerated: “Well, yes, MA’am!”)

That seems to be true across the country (it's been the case everywhere I've been, at least).

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