--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...> wrote:
> In Polish, wy (pl.) can be used as a polite counterpart of ty (sg.)
> in conservative rural dialects; it also used to be the official form
> of address between Communist Party members (thus causing some
> embarrassment when used in an informal situation); also when an
> ancient-r�gime policeman accosted a citizen in the street, he would
> often use the "polite" wy, which didn't sound particularly courteous
> in that ominous setting. The normal form of polite address in Polish
> is pan (m.)/pani (f.), used with the 3sg. of the verb. It functions
> like a honorific pronoun, but apart from that it's also an ordinary
> noun meaning 'lord/lady', 'Mr./Mrs.' and the like.
Russian is the same way. In the pre- and post-Communist era,
<i>gospodin</i> is "mister" and <i>gospoz^a</i> is now used for "mizz"
(replacing earlier "misses" and "miss"). Even more inclusively,
<i>gospoda</i> means "ladies and gentlemen". (In all cases, stress is
final.)
I reckon Polish and Russian polite forms came about via French
influence, while German goes its own way and expresses politeness using
the third person plural <i>Sie</i> for both singular and plural.
Spanish uses the third person singular and plural forms with a
distinctive pronoun, <i>Usted(es)</i> (from <i>vuestra merced</i> "your
grace").
Hindi also uses a new pronoun, <i>a:p</i>, but I forgot what form the
verb takes. Persian, which curiously already has many things in common
with English, uses the second person plural with no distinction of
politeness; the archaic second person singular went the way of "thou"
and "thee", found only in literary and poetic registers and
"ultra-formal" expressions.
By the way, Persian in my opinion is one of the easiest languages to
learn for an English speaker. And it's even written in Arabic script.
DaW.
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