for what prize I woot not

[melannen]

Sometimes I sore regret that I grew up with a language which makes no distinction between formal and informal pronouns.

This comes up because I seem to be writing Boston Legal fic as a Sir Thomas Malory pastiche, and while Late Middle English *grammar* I can manage pretty instinctively, I keep having to stop and think about whether to use 'you' or 'thou'. Okay, so it's not as hard as it *could* be - clearly King Dennys uses 'thou' to *everyone*, because *everyone* is inferior to Dennys of Cranepool. Sir Alain du Côte, by contrast, always uses 'you', because Sir Alain is familiar with nobody - except with Dennys, and occasionally with whatever damosel he's sleeping with. I have a feeling that Sir Jeraint, the Knight of the Hands, uses 'you' with absolutely everyone, except when he's very nervous and forgets, because it seems like that's one of the social things Asperger's would make difficult. It's when I start with the characters who are more or less normal that I run into trouble.

I suppose that this isn't that big of a difficulty - after all, many modern languages still make the distinction, English being one of the first to drop it, so translators must handle the issue. But when I speak Spanish I usually just go with 'usted' for everyone, because none of my teachers bothered to explain how to choose (and since they all spoke different dialects anyway, they'd probably have contradicted each other), and anyway it's one less set of conjugations to remember. I have a feeling I sound comically old-fashioned, but then my grammar sucks so bad they'd be laughing at me anyway, and better too formal than too informal - anyway usted is the direct translation of English 'you'. And in English I only fall naturally into 'thou' when cursing people.

This is actually the *second* Arthurian pastiche I've attempted in the past few months. The first was an SGA retelling of the romance of "John, the Knight of the Lion", (because who other than John Sheppard would go on adventure, get manipulated into marrying a lady, and then go back to his city and get distracted and completely *forget* that he'd married her?) John uses 'you' graciously toward his men and ungraciously toward his superiors but 'thou' promiscuously towards people he considers his equals. Rodney, by contrast, thous everybody indiscriminately until they earn his respect, at which point he switches to 'you' and sticks with it, even while he's calling them idiots. Elizabeth is scrupulously correct, using 'thou' to inferiors and 'you' to superiors and equals, although she tends to fall back to 'thou' in private, even with Caldwell. Ronon uses 'thou' on everyone except those above him in his direct chain of command, because that's how they did it on Sateda. Teyla and the Athosians only use the formal (except in prayer), although she's been picking up the informal a little with people who use it to her, mostly John. Ford uses 'thou' with his inferiors and equals and 'you' with his superiors and has always felt slightly odd about the Major calling him 'you'.

And, hey, since I went there *anyway* - Mulder thous everybody as a direct affront to his aristocratic background, except when he's being manipulative. He was being manipulative when he met Scully, and then never got around to switching back. Scully is very correct in the same middle-class way as Elizabeth, but the longer she spends around Mulder the looser she gets. House uses thou exclusively except with his parents. And with Wilson's wives and Chase's father, and other attempts to be deliberately obnoxious with it. It took him almost six months to get Chase to stop using 'you' on him, and he still hasn't broken him of being polite to Cuddy and the patients. Cameron switched from 'thou' back to 'you' with him after their date, and Foremen always uses you, except when House suceeds in provoking him. Wilson also uses 'thou' with everyone, but somehow with him they assume it's affectionate rather than contemptuous.

Harry Potter uses 'thou' with everyone he calls by their first name and 'you' with evereybody else, except for Dumbledore and Snape whenever he thinks he can get away with it, and Mr. & Mrs. Weasley because they insist, and Slytherins when he wants to make trouble. Bones uses 'you' with everyone, even small children, except the people she considers hers, which is basically just the stooges and Booth. Hodgins considers 'you' to be a tool of the patriarchy; Zack calls everybody 'you' because whenever he tries to 'thou' somebody he gets shot down, except Hodgins and Bones and (when she's feeling generous) Angela. Booth takes 'thou' from Bones and his army buddies but nobody else.

SG1 always sticks with 'you' except in moments of extreme emotion, except for Daniel, who will at the slightest provocation give you a ten-minute dissertation on why English preserved the informal form, and who likes to randomly switch to 'thou' just to see Jack twitch, and has gotten everybody but Jack to use thou with him off-duty. Jack has never yet called a Goa'uld anything other than 'thou', except that sometimes with General Carter he forgets; and he's been on thou terms with Thor since about ten minutes after they met. The Asgard and the Ancients thou *everybody*, but the Nox don't, even when they're calling us children; the Tollan use 'you' but they make it clear it's only to be polite.

Darnit, now I want to write stories where they really do use middle English pronouns. Oh, wait - there's one open on my desktop right now! What a coincidence! I'll get right to that, then.

Comments

[fluffyllama.livejournal.com]

You are insane in entirely novel and interesting ways, you know :D This was great fun to read ;-)

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I always aim for my eccentricity to be distinctive! Thank you. (:

[terredancer.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating, but then languages fascinate me anyway. Bah on the lack of a distinct difference between formal and informal, anyway. :p

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I know! Socializing would be so much simpler if I could use pronouns as cues for status.

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

Wow!

.. why has there been no more posted since last night?? *looks pitiful*

[melannen.livejournal.com]

... because I pulled out my copy of Le Morte Darthur for language reference and got distracted reading it and nitpicking my grammar in the first part?

Part iii will be up tonight. *promise*

[melsmarsh.livejournal.com]

You scare me sometimes. I don't think I could keep all the different versions of "you" straight.

I also thought you was the informal while thou was the formal, which seems to conflict with your post. 4 years of Medieval Studies and I can't be certain. Too confusing.

All I know is in Romanian I'm using "dumneavoastrã" for everyone which is the formal plural version of "you". They have at least 3 versions of "you."

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Eh, English only has two versions! That's simple. Use 'thou' for people with whom it doesn't matter if you get right or not, and 'you' for everyone else (and for plural).

I don't really like formal/informal as the division: thou is the 'familiar' form: used for very dear friends, and for subordinates and inferiors, and when you want to insult people by implying that they're inferior. Also, apparently, at least by the 15th century, used commonly among the lower classes when speaking to each other.

'You' is used both as the plural and to show respect, deference, and/or distance, and among the knightly classes to each other, respect is assumed; the same with a peasant speaking to a noble.

However, by the 18th century, the meaning had almost become reversed. 'Thou' was always used in prayer when addressing God - God, presumably, being a very dear friend - and since it was preserved in that sense, people began to associate it with formality. And then the Quakers used it with everyone, originally a symbol of egalitarianism, but when the rest of the world went egalitarian by switching to 'you', Quakers stuck with 'thou' for a while, and again it was seen as formal, old-fashioned, respectful. But the switch didn't happen until people had pretty much quit using it in normal language.

[melsmarsh.livejournal.com]

I think my brain exploded.

I will never get the Romanian "you" as they have 3 just for singular and at least two for formal.

If I had multiple versions in English... argh!

[amedia.livejournal.com]

I think my brain exploded.

:-) Then I shouldn't mention the disappearance of the subjective "ye" form - it's as if we're all using "us" to mean "I."

More generally...

I wonder whether the rise of informal second-person-plural forms tracks with the disappearance of the second-person-singular? I teach Latin in Texas these days, where the students like to use "you" for second-person-singular and "y'all" for second-person-plural.

And melannen - I wandered in from metafandom and I love how you work out what forms different characters would use! Harry Potter made me giggle, while Daniel Jackson made me ROFL!

[ciaan]

I'm a Quaker, and actually, it's not thou at all. It's always thee. Somewhere fairly early on, the grammar was totally altered. So it'd be stuff like "What does thee think?" and "Has thee anything to add?" I've never actually used it. I only know a few people who do, and even then it's only occasionally, to emphasize something as being Quakerly. Which means, yes, formal or technical, or sometimes just passive-agressive. Some people do use it as more familiar form. It's only the rare, rare people who do plain speech and use it with everyone.

Ahh, language.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I know Quakers rarely use it these days, but I'd forgotten that they used it *wrong*. Did they not start using it until *well* after everyone else had stopped? It's kind of strange really that Quakers would keep using only "thee" when most of the other remnant uses - "holier than thou", "how great thou art" - still use 'thou'.

[ciaan]

I think it's been that way since pretty early on in Quaker history, and the religion started about 350 years ago. I'm not quite sure how that lines up with the decline of thou in the rest of society, though.

[sunbeamj.livejournal.com]

Hello -

I come via metafandom! Languages are interesting. Unfortunately, having English as my native language gives me a little bit of a disadvantage with formal and informal "you"'s... which doesn't help at all when my foreign language teachers don't really care how you're addressing people. We use the informal "you" all the time in my German class, even though we were told in the first week to use "Sie" (formal) for adults, but a new, young teacher came along and we all turned to "du" (informal) for everyone. I think most people forget that there's a formal version, and this saddens me. ;_;

I love your ideas of how the different people would address others, especially when I know what context you're talking about! (Believe me, with the rate I keep up with stuff, this is amazing.)

This makes me want to read stories with middle English pronouns. Languages are very, very interesting...

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, foreign language teaching in the US *sucks*. I think that's pretty much a constant.

>>This makes me want to read stories with middle English pronouns.
Well, we'll just have to get people to write some! A Middle English Fanfic Challenge! *I'm* having fun doing it. :D

[sunbeamj.livejournal.com]

Well - I wouldn't say my foreign language teaching sucks. Both of my teachers grew up in the countries that they're teaching the language of, so they definitely know what they're teaching and can correct us.

That would be really cool, to see more middle English. I don't really read fanfic (I'd like to but have never had a real introduction to it) but I'd try that.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

clearly King Dennys uses 'thou' to *everyone*, because *everyone* is inferior to Dennys of Cranepool

*giggles* But of course they are. Is he going to refer to interns serving women as "wenches?"

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Actually, knowing me, he'll probably refer to serving women as "sluts", because, dude! Any excuse to use that word in its original non-vulgar meaning! Always funny.

[kazaera.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom:

This rant interests me because my native language is German, which has the formal/informal you distinction. :) Plus, we talked about it in my linguistics lectures.
I'll just use "thou" and "you" throughout rather than switch to German pronouns since that'd be confusing.
There are some differences between languages, and major differences between formal-vs-informal now and formal-vs-informal previously. For instance, the whole "thou for subordinates/inferiors" is basically not used at all these days. Either two people call each other "you" or they call each other "thou". The only exception is adult-child interactions.
In German, there are a couple of basic rules. Default is "you" to all people over sixteen years of age - the exception here is that schoolchildren and students at university keep calling each other "thou" (only each other, note). There are groups in which "thou" is universally used (e.g. political party, family, the likes). Apart from that, it's really a friendship thing - apparently the typical case is that the older of the pair offers the "thou" when s/he decides they're ready and they'll call each other "thou" ever after. (Withdrawing "thou" would be a deadly insult, I think. So would refusing to repicrocate.)

I think it's interesting because the whole formal/informal thing is so deeply embedded in our consciousness. Using the wrong pronoun is generally really humiliating and possibly highly insulting to the person you're talking to, and I cringe when I even imagine calling, say, one of my old schoolteachers "thou". (In fact, one of them wanted to be called that and I couldn't manage.) I actually slipped up once talking to my speech therapist and was MORTIFIED. I'm lucky she wasn't upset about it.

because it seems like that's one of the social things Asperger's would make difficult.

I also sort-of-possibly have AS and definitely some AS traits, so although I'm not the best example I may be able to say something here too. From my perspective, it's not difficult most of the time because for most people it's very clear what you're supposed to use. Kid in the street = thou. Adult waitress in the cafe = you. However, as soon as things get more complicated and uncertain I'm lost. So if this adult is an old friend from uni of my mum's and they call each other "thou" but I've never seen him before in my life, what do I call him? (Probably "you", but I wasn't certain). What do I call someone who is at uni but is a lab assistant - i.e. not a student but not a professor? It's sort of difficult because using "you" when you should use "thou" is mortifyingly embarassing and "thou" instead of "you" is highly insulting to the person you're speaking to.
In those situations one quickly learns to carry a conversation without ever using the second person at all.