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From: Ben Sauvin <sauvin@csql.mv.com>
Subject: Re: Use of "tu" replacing "Usted" in Spanish?
Message-ID: <3251D86E.3063@csql.mv.com>
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Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 02:50:22 GMT
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Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
> 
> 71064.332@compuserve.com wrote:
> 
> >I rode into Anchorage to catch a plane home yesterday with a woman
> >from Fairbanks who's studying Spanish at UAF and said her teacher
> >had told her that there is a definite trend in Spanish language usage to
> >reduce the formality & use "tu" more often.  She wasn't able to tell me
> >whether this was said to be a trend in Spain, some parts of Latin
> >America, or where (I somehow have the impression that something
> >like this has been true in, say East L.A. or the South Bronx for quite
> >a while, but I got the impression that's not what her teacher was
> >talking about).
> 
> I can only speak for the Old Country, where the trend is indeed to use
> "tu" more and more often at the expense of Usted (Vd.).
> 
> >  How about in German or French which have similar
> >distinctions of formality between "du/Sie", "tu/vous" (I remember my
> >mother coming back from Europe in '76 still fuming because a Vopo
> >had addressed her using "du"!)? What are the trends?
> 
> I think Germany and France may be exceptions, but I gather that in the
> Scandinavian languages the changeover is virtually complete (Royalty
> now being addressed using du as well).  In Dutch, the trend is also to
> use "jij, je", instead of "U".  In general, I use "jij" with persons
> of my own age and younger, and "U" to older persons.  Now that I'm
> approaching 40, of course, the number of "jij"'s keeps growing, and
> the "U"'s start to get thin on the ground.  In the old days, there
> must have been a mechanism whereby one shifted pronouns, and started
> to address one's own age-group in the polite form.  The mechanism has
> vanished (somewhere in the 60's/70's?).  I am sometimes addressed as
> "U" myself now, by the occasional polite youngster, and it always
> comes as a bit of a shock to me.
> 
> ==
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal                     ~ ~
> Amsterdam                   _____________  ~ ~
> mcv@pi.net                 |_____________|||
> 
> ========================== Ce .sig n'est pas une .cig

  My childhood French is from the American Midwest (Illinois, to be 
exact), thanks to a great-grandfather who left the Pays Basque seeking 
goodness remembers what, and so I couldn't say with any real conviction 
that the trend towards informal modes of address in the French language 
is similar to what is reported in the quoted message above.

  The mechanism for becoming a "vous" after a young lifetime of being 
pretty much universally a "tu" was the simple expedient of having 
(apparently) sustained 25 birthdays or so, or of sporting a wedding 
band, or otherwise prominently displaying some external evidence of, um, 
age? ... wisdom? ... experience?

  In our little enclave, the rule was strictly enforced, so much so that 
one could scarcely have been more affronted in being addressed in the 
"incorrect" manner as in being treated to some of the more colourful 
elements of the language.

  Not having spoken French in two decades, I WAS taken aback by the 
frequency and/or ease with which people in Montreal lapsed into the 
informal modes, in spite of my being both unknown in that city AND being 
manifestly senior to those addressing me thus. My understanding is that 
the continental French tend or are beginning to tend to be just as free.
