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From: Richard Wojcik <rickw@eskimo.com>
Subject: Re: Formal "you" disappearing because of the Internet?
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SylvanZ wrote:
> 
> In an article "Net Effect: Changing European Languages" in the online
> edition of The New York Times (October 15, 1996), Richard P. Greenfield
> suggests that the internet may be contributing to diminished use of the
> formal "you" in "French, Italian, German, Russian and Spanish." According
> to the article, the French Academy is taking note of this...

I didn't see the article, so I'd like to know what kind of "evidence"
they presented.  My own experience with Russian and French chat sessions
has been that the informal nature of those interchanges calls out for
informal
modes of expression.  So you use "tu" or "ty" a lot more with strangers
than you normally would.  This does not necessarily mean the social
rules for 
interaction are changing.  It could just mean that the new modes of 
communication don't trigger formal interactions in the way that
face-to-face
meetings would.  On the other hand, as a native speaker of English, I've 
never been very comfortable with the formal/informal "you" registers
anyway.
-- 
Rick Wojcik                                       Bellevue, WA
rickw@eskimo.com                                 
http://www.eskimo.com/~rickw
