Re: [tied] Re: Formal and Informal 2nd Person

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To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2000 12:25 AM

Subject: [tied] Re: Formal and Informal 2nd Person

Dear Nemo,

 

Since the polite plural in can hardly be Proto-Slavic, it's clear that it emerged independently in the various Slavic languages, but the external source of the innovation may have been the same or nearly the same. I don't know any attestation dates for Russian or Czech, but I could quote plenty of examples of polite "wy" from the Polish literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the impact of French was neither direct nor strong yet. Brothers and sisters Slavs, can you help me?

 

I wonder if High German could have mediated between Old French and Polish. To be sure, German has Sie (not *Ihr) nowadays, but I don't know the history of German well enough to tell how old this use of Sie is (Late Middle High German?) -- some other form of polite address may have preceded it. I'm only guessing.

 

Does anyone out there know anything about the emergence of polite Sie in German?

 

Piotr

 

 

 

>This plural of respect is pretty old in the Slavic languages.
>I think it's ultimately due to late Latin/early Romance influence
>rather than modern French.

This is really interesting. I do appreciate your opinion, but can you
substantiate it in any way? My impression (nothing more) is that this
plural of respect originated in the Slavic languages independently.