[snidane]

As someone coming from a culture with T-V distinction [1], I always wished we dropped one of the branches like English did in the past.

The informal T vs formal V causes confusion in conversation with semi-strangers. Eg. At work you never really know which way to speak to someone at a watercooler. If you choose the informal T you make them your equal. Ehich might be perceived as insulting to them, since they might want to keep a perception of superiority to you for eg. being older, more tenured, etc. Often you'd rather choose not to even engage in a conversation and just keep your thoughts to yourself. Better than ending up in a inferior position when choosing the safe V, or risking insulting someone when using the informal T form.

This felt to me like one of the reasons why English became the dominant language for business over time. Together with simplified morphology (you only need to learn the plural by adding 's' at the end, vs. 5+ other tenses of each word) it just ended up being much easier to pick up and less risky to engage in conversations and therefore higher chances of adoption by non-speakers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction

[emodendroket]

> This felt to me like one of the reasons why English became the dominant language for business over time.

I don't think that has much to do with it. I think it has more to do with the dominant political and economic position of the United States. French served a similar role in the past despite having all the features you describe.

[abtinf]

America was an economic backwater until the 1900s.

France was, and to a greatly diminished extent still is, a global power.

French has T-V distinction.

French has arbitrary noun gendering.

The noun gendering alone makes it significantly easier to embarrass yourself speaking French than English.

[freddie_mercury]

> America was an economic backwater until the 1900s.

The US was the largest economy in the world by 1890.

It should be obvious that it wasn't an economic backwater even before that.

By 1850 it bigger than Russia, Italy, Spain, Germany, or France.

The US stopped being an economy backwater sometime in the early 1800s. Well over a century earlier than your claim.

[tzs]

I'd guess that the size of a country's import/export economy is more important than the size of its total economy when it comes to how much a country will influence language in the rest of the world.

Google is refusing to turn up anything useful when I try to find information on when the US became a top importer/exporter.

[freddie_mercury]

The US has always been one of the world's top exporters due to its cotton industry and the cotton boom that started in the 1780s. It is quite likely that the US was a Top 1 or 2 exporter by the time the Constitution was signed in 1789. Remember there were very few manufactured goods yet and not even that much else that was worth importing.

By the 1850s US cotton accounted for 77% of the cotton used in Britain, 90% used in France, 60% used in Germany, and 92% used in Russia.

[tim333]

Prior to the 1900s there was the British empire which spread English around a fair bit.

>At its height in the 19th and early 20th century, it was the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the foremost global power. (wikipedia)

It was said the sun never set on the British empire as it had bits in most time zones which led to a joke from the Indians that it was because God didn't trust the British in the dark.

[scheme271]

Probably the combination of the British empire and subsequent US dominance led to english being established as the language. If you go to places like South Asia, English is pretty well established despite it being no one's native language there. So the British spread it around globally and then the US being a dominant superpower pretty much cemented it's status.

[leereeves]

The dominance of America really started after WWII, but before that the British Empire spread the English language around the world.

If France had won the Seven Years War or the Napoleonic Wars, French would probably still be the global lingua franca, because people didn't choose which language to learn, they learned the language of whichever colonial power controlled their lands.

[nerdponx]

> America was an economic backwater until the 1900s.

That seems like a stretch.

My understanding is that plantation cash crops grown in the South like Cotton were a major export in the early-mid 19th Century.

And then of course Standard Oil was incorporated in 1870.

Maybe the effect of American industrialization didn't have a big effect internationally until the ~1890s and onward, but I'd hardly say the USA was a backwater throughout the industrial revolution.

[chimeracoder]

> Maybe the effect of American industrialization didn't have a big effect internationally until the ~1890s and onward, but I'd hardly say the USA was a backwater throughout the industrial revolution.

The US had a huge effect on industrialized Europe before that. The British textile revolution would never have happened if the US hadn't supplied a large chunk of the cotton (from plantations in the South) and if the British hadn't physically destroyed the the-dominant textile industry in India.

[oldgradstudent]

> The noun gendering alone makes it significantly easier to embarrass yourself speaking French than English.

English has more than enough of ways to easily embarrass yourself without the need for arbitrary noun gendering.

[andruby]

Such as?

I’m genuinely asking for examples. I’ve embarrassed myself quite often in French, yet haven’t much in English.

* neither are my mother tongue

[adhesive_wombat]

The adjective order one is really interesting to explain: the adjectives in "good small old red wooden English book" have to come in that order or it sounds very peculiar.

Other European languages may have this to, but explaining it to people who speak unrelated languages usual results in a wail of "but why?!"

Many English speakers don't themselves realise it - in the UK, at least, we are not carefully taught English piece by piece after a very young age. Most grammatical understanding comes when (if!) you study a foreign language and then you find out that "find out" is a thing called a "phrasal verb".

[samvimes]

> "good small old red wooden English book" have to come in that order or it sounds very peculiar.

Interesting. As a native English speaker (from the US), I'd say that "good small old" felt a little awkward for me to say out loud. Personally, I'd probably say "good old small ...", but to your point, there isn't exactly a "right" answer, just one that sounds right. I'm assuming you're also a native English speaker from the UK, so maybe we've discovered a funky difference between the English in our two countries. It would be a fun study to give native English speakers a list of those adjectives, and the noun "book", and tell them to order them.

[FergusArgyll]

Steven Pinker's book on irregular verbs has a great example of this.

little kids often mess up on irregular verbs ("I eated supper") because they (subconsciously?) learn the grammar, they aren't memorizing the past tense of every word

[oblio]

> Other European languages may have this to, but explaining it to people who speak unrelated languages usual results in a wail of "but why?!"

They do, and just like in your other example, they internalize it, they just don't realize they do it automatically because it "sounds good".

> Most grammatical understanding comes when (if!) you study a foreign language and then you find out that "find out" is a thing called a "phrasal verb".

That's super funny, isn't this taught in middle school or something? In Romania you study Romanian grammar from 5th to 8th grade (11/12 to 14/15), and you learn syntax, morphology, etc.

Does the average English speaker really not know about the term "phrasal verb"? :-)

[ajmurmann]

There are lots of tricky things in English language, but the adjective order doesn't nearly carry the potential for embarrassment as gender-related mistakes.

[akkad33]

A couple of examples that come to mind is using the wrong verb form, since English has a lot of irregular verbs, and another is mispronouncing words, since there are many words with the same spelling but different pronunciations. And then you have words like "read", which have both characteristics.

[oldgradstudent]

Tenses, pronounciation that is completely divorced from spelling, idioms, prepositions, word order, articles, and so on.

As a foreigner that observed a lot of other foreigners speaking English: it is not an easy language to master.

[fegu]

To "the" or not to "the" before a name or noun.

[andruby]

I’ve heard lots of people with a Spanish background make mistakes against this. Iirc in Spanish you often should use it in front of a name.

[volemo]

Series “Mind your language” is one big example (along with cheesy ‘70s humour).

[tacone]

Such as great classics like:

Let me go take a sheet.

I really like that beach.

[hex4def6]

But those are pronounced differently. Of course, English has its fair share; Their / They're / There, beach / beech, etc etc.

But I don't think English particularly stands out, and I can think of languages that are much worse than it in that regard (especially for an outsider). Mandarin / Cantonese / Japanese / French / Korean are all pretty notorious examples for homophone collisions.

[emodendroket]

There are not that many words distinguished only by gender and I don’t think the number of those where it would really be an embarrassing blunder is that great. All languages offer pitfalls like this anyway.

[tuetuopay]

(French here) It’s not really about words distinguished by gender, but misgendering a word will sound very weird to French people. So much so you’ll be labeled as foreign immediately. As crazy as it may seem, but misgendering objects sounds worse than misgendering people (in a purely linguistic way).

[emodendroket]

I mean, of course, but sounding obviously foreign isn't so bad if your meaning can be understood and you haven't accidentally said something with a wildly different meaning than intended.

[mark38848]

People really overestimate the importance of this. If you go to le or la gare doesn't matter much. But if you don't know "gare" in the first place you could have a harder time. Also "embarrassing yourself" doesn't happen because everybody loves it when n-th (for any n > 1) language speakers attempt to speak their language.

[thaumasiotes]

> The noun gendering alone makes it significantly easier to embarrass yourself speaking French than English.

This... greatly underestimates the number of ways you can make a mistake while speaking a foreign language.

If you're a non-Francophone trying to speak French, you have a 100% of making obvious mistakes while you try, and some of those mistakes will probably relate to noun gendering.

If you're a non-Anglophone trying to speak English, you have the same - 100% - chance of making obvious mistakes while you try to do that. Depending on what languages you do speak, you may or may not make mistakes in noun gendering. (English noun gendering is a huge problem for Chinese speakers, and boy does it make them sound unnatural.)

But that doesn't matter; that's just one way to make a mistake. Your odds of making no mistakes of any kind are zero. Why worry about one particular subclass? You're foreign and everyone who hears you will recognize that.

[refurb]

> America was an economic backwater until the 1900s.

The US was the largest economy in the world in 1890. That would suggest it wasn't a backwater until at least the early 1800's.

[danmaz74]

But the UK was the biggest empire on earth at that time.

[solidsnack9000]

English was a widespread language of trade long before America was a big deal because of British shipping.

[vlz]

Shipping sure, but also simply the fact that a good part of the worlds population were part of the British empire. Wikipedia has 23% of the world population at 1913.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire

[emodendroket]

Yes, but so were other contenders like French and German which have not retained such a prominent role.

[samus]

Germany was not even unified by the time the UK took over India from the East India Company. Germany eventually had colonies, but they altogether didn't have such a long-lasting influence on the global economy as the British Empire had.

The French colonial empire was much larger, but in the 19th century they were not really present in the Americas anymore, and Vietnam was their only major colony in Asia.

[pmontra]

Yes, but the German speaking empire of the last centuries was Austria, not Germany.

Both had limited reach outside Europe. Germany had that colonial push to grab what was left in Africa and in Oceania at the end of the 19th century. Losing WW1 ended it all.

[samus]

The legacy of that empire (it was purely Austria only after 1809) and of Prussia was quite long-lasting though. Because of the medieval Ostsiedlung and rulers granting land and privileges, there once were German-speaking enclaves all over Eastern Europe. A few still exist. Only ethnic cleansing after WWII and Germany enabling them to move away by granting citizenship to them made them disappear.

Some legacy still remains: for economic reasons, German is one of the most frequently learned languages in Eastern Europe.

[solidsnack9000]

Several factors contributed to English's success. I just think it would be a mistake to attribute it all to America.

[herbst]

I wonder why we (central Europe, 90s) all learned British English if they goal would have been to not sound awkward next to Americans?

[dashtiarian]

Is speaking to someone formally considered ending up in an inferior position in all cultures?

In Persian if someone expects to be spoken with formally, they have to speak formally themselves. So when you speak formally you're kinda bringing both parties up. You can even flirt by speaking formally.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

In Spanish asymmetric conversations have always been a thing, e.g. student-teacher, patient-doctor or younger-older conversations where the former side uses V and the latter T.

The V is gradually being dropped in Spain and in the last few decades the process seems to have accelerated, though, definitely it seems faster than in French (although I don't know that much about French). I don't think my 4-year-old son will have much use for the V in his life. And like your parent comment, I also think that's probably for the best in our case, although it does sound like it's probably different in Persian.

[rodric]

> The V is gradually being dropped in Spain and in the last few decades the process seems to have accelerated

I own a Spanish textbook printed (in English) in 1958 that says about «usted»: ‘It is the universal respectful address of society, and the only one the foreigner is ever likely to employ or hear addressed to him, unless he marries a native or forms intimate friendships.’ How times have changed!

[freedomben]

This is what I was taught as well when taking Spanish 30 years ago. Fast forward 20 years and me visiting Mexico City for the first time, and I got some really strange looks using usted

[asveikau]

Spanish has lots of funky history in its second person pronouns that vary regionally. After Argentina's recent election I've been consuming lots of content from there, and it sometimes surprises me how frequently they use vos in things that would seem to call for politeness. Vos itself was formal address in Spain in the time of Cervantes IIRC, it is also the origin of vuestro merced (usted)

[chimeracoder]

> After Argentina's recent election I've been consuming lots of content from there, and it sometimes surprises me how frequently they use vos in things that would seem to call for politeness. Vos itself was formal address in Spain in the time of Cervantes IIRC, it is also the origin of vuestro merced (usted)

vos is not really formal in Argentinian Spanish, although it does share an etymologocal root with vuestro merced/Usted.

Argentinian Spanish is itself pretty different from other Latin American dialects, but in general vos is used interchangeably with tú, to the point where the accusative form of "vos" is also te - ie, "Vos te levantás" instead of "tú te levantas" (note the location of the accents in each example).

The connotations of formality (or lack thereof) are subtle and vary much more widely than you might imagine - far more than the comment limit on HN would permit - but by and large it's better to think of vos as the informal pronoun, and the only question is whether it's used alongside tú, in place of it, or in some weird combination that has its own subtle connotations.

[asveikau]

I know this. What I'm saying is I'm surprised at people using vos where usted seems kind of necessary to me. What I also said is that vos was formal 500 years ago, which is an unrelated observation.

[eternauta3k]

Vos is informal, Usted is formal. That's it. We don't use "Tu" AFAIK.

[totallywrong]

And that depends on the country as well. In Colombia usted can be formal or not, as in parents using it with their children, or among friends, where supposedly tú or vos would be more appropriate.

[shaky-carrousel]

I always start formal (except with kids), and if the other part switches to informal, then I switch too.

[calvinmorrison]

Growing up in the south it was all yes sir no sir yes ma'am no ma'am

[devilbunny]

And in many ways still is, especially for kids, but Southern English also has mechanisms for expressing familiarity and respect at the same time - it was in no way unusual for us to call friends' parents by their first name, provided we prefixed it with "Mr/Miss" (always Miss, for some reason, even if an obviously married woman).

[ramses0]

It's considered "polite" to imply that the woman in question is obviously still an unmarried hottie, which is why you always "err on the side of Miss", rather than "mistake on the side of Mrs."

[yongjik]

In Korean there are four commonly used forms, which map into the combination of (formal vs informal) x (polite vs not-so-polite). (That's a simple picture and the reality is a lot messier... but let's not get into that.)

E.g.,

Formal polite: military, business email, public announcement

Formal non-polite: textbooks, novels

Informal polite: kids' books, between coworkers, between customer and clerk

Informal non-polite: siblings, childhood friends, mom to kids

[BalinKing]

This sounds very similar to my (very amateur) understanding of how Japanese works as well.

[blowski]

How does the “flirting by speaking formally” work? “I say, does Madam visit this establishment frequently”.

[coldtea]

Yes, but imagine it not sounding funny like in the English case, because it's a normal feature of the language/culture...

[blowski]

Is it because of cultural expectations in how men and women should address each other? Does the formal language get used for properly formal situations as well? Is there a whole set of specific terms for this?

Sorry for all the questions. I just found it fascinating.

[coldtea]

Not sure about the specifics for Iran in particular (the grandparent can answer), I've just heard about that from some friends hailing from there.

But I could relate it, as it was a "chic" thing to do in my parts too back in the day (until around the 1970s), for upper class folks (using the polite forms of address, and so on).

A good analogy in English terms might be the flirting with all the speaking formalities in period movies live "Room with a view" or "Pride and Prejudice".

[throwaway2037]

FYI: Large parts of Afghanistan and Tajikistan also speak Persian. I was surprised to learn this recently.

[dashtiarian]

Different cultures. Persian has 1100 years of literature and recent media for this.

On the other hand you can't dirty talk with a straight face in Persian, since nobody has ever heard or read about it, it sounds super funny.

[pbhjpbhj]

I admit I know barely anything about the subject (but I took an interest in Burton as a younger man): is The Perfumed Garden not "dirty", ie erotic literature?

I recall the One-Thousand-and-One Nights being quite bawdy (talking about lusting after well-endowed servants, IIRC); maybe that's not authentic Persian literature though?

Maybe I misunderstood "nobody has ever read or heard about it"?

Can you help me better understand your comment, thanks.

[dashtiarian]

The current 1001 nights is Arabic and the Middle Persian one is lost. Nevertheless, it is a pre-islamic literature. Perfumed Garden is Arabic and has just been recently translated into Persian.

New Persian literature starts around Rudaki (9th century). Since Islam made sex and showing affection taboo, the tiny fraction of explicit erotica are not studied/known by the general public. Because of the taboo, majority of Persians have not ever heard their parents speak affectionately. And when we study affectionate literature in school the teachers tell us it's about the love for God, and the exams will question us about such love.

[pySSK]

It’s a nice gesture kinda like holding the door open for you date.

[globular-toast]

Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ?

[grishka]

In Russian you can sometimes jokingly call someone like a friend or a partner "вы" + their first and middle (father's) name. It makes you sound kinda important.

[rzzzt]

M'lady

[timeagain]

Well inferior might be overly simplistic. In many cultures you use formal speech with strangers as well.

[elboru]

Not in mine. But you surely build a barrier of “respect”, I learned that early in my career. I was too formal and “too respectful”, that built a barrier with many people, a barrier other teammates didn’t have. That barrier can be useful though, but you need to be aware of it.

[andrepd]

The Wikipedia article linked lists several types of T-V distinctions. Some are based on age, others on age difference, social status, and many more subtle factors. They also change very quickly: my parents speak to their parents with V but I do with T.

[abtinf]

Formal Farsi borders on being its own dialect. I grew up only learning informal "street" Farsi, and find formal Farsi to be almost impenetrable (granted I've never tried to learn it).

[api]

That actually sounds really cool.

[grishka]

Russian is my native language and it does also have this distinction (ты/вы). For me, there's not really any issue with that, not so much that I would want to remove this distinction. It's very clear to me most of the time which pronoun to call someone. Yes, it depends on a lot of context, but I've been making these decisions every day for all my life so it's not that hard.

In your example about work, I'd just always use "ты" without giving it a second thought, and wouldn't mind others using it to address me. Maybe it's just our culture that has a more lax attitude towards it, I don't know.

The only case that I find kinda cringy is when people (rarely) call bartenders and waiters "ты". For me it's very clear that when a person you don't know serves you, it should be "вы".

> This felt to me like one of the reasons why English became the dominant language for business over time.

Probably not. English is messy when it comes to pronunciation and irregular verbs, not exactly the easiest language to learn.

[mytailorisrich]

English became the dominant business language for reasons unrelated to the English language itself but because of the relative power of the people who spoke the language.

[softfalcon]

Yeah, I feel like people forget about that whole British Imperialism thing too easily.

We all speak English because at one point the English practically owned the entire planet.

[F3nd0]

Compare English with Esperanto, which, in spite of being much easier to learn than English, still hasn't become anywhere near as widespread (at least in terms of number of speakers).

Ironically the one biggest thing which presents an ideological advantage for Esperanto is that it's native to no nation, so all the people who speak it are closer to being equals in that regard; yet it is the imperialism and a large number of native speakers which has helped to make English so prevalent. So just being technically and morally superior doesn't win you adoption by a long shot, even if you try.

And it may be of note for this post that the original author of Esperanto was very conscious of this whole formal/informal issue, which is why he opted to introduce only the plural second person pronoun into practice.

[batch12]

English is neither morally superior nor morally inferior to Esperanto.

[F3nd0]

In general? No, of course not; I feel that would be an absurd claim to make.

But as an international language? I think having everyone learn something that is comparatively easy to learn is certainly more fair than having most people learn something that is comparatively hard to learn and understood by others from the get-go, thereby giving the latter an unfair advantage. And I feel that being more fair in this regard is indeed morally superior.

(Then again, that might just boil down to one's own idea of morality. But I feel like this one shouldn't be all too uncommon, and the claim is entirely reasonable in its terms.)

[rep_lodsb]

Esperanto may not be native to any nation, but as far as I'm aware, it's heavily influenced by Latin and various European languages.

Not saying that this is it's main problem, and other constructed languages like Lojban are probably even less relevant despite trying to be more "culturally neutral".

[F3nd0]

Yes, you are entirely correct. Making a language that’s fully ‘culturally neutral’ is likely impossible, but even so, Esperanto could have done much better in this regard (and as far as I know, some other constructed languages do much better in this regard).

Even then, it's a very big jump from ‘people in some countries already know this and don’t need to learn at all’ to ‘people in some countries will have an easier time learning since they’ll recognise a lot of the words’; making this jump would already be a great improvement upon the status quo. Out of the languages which make the jump, Esperanto is by far the most widely spoken and otherwise used in practice.

[8372049]

That's not universally true. In my country, German was the widely accepted and taught second language until WW2. Since then it's been English.

[OJFord]

How is that not essentially the same point? The second language was determined by international politics, not linguistic merit.

[8372049]

Depends on your level of abstraction, I guess. GP stated "We all speak English because at one point the English practically owned the entire planet."

Which in our case is false. We stopped learning German as a second language because of the Nazi aggression and atrocities during WW2, and started learning English as a second language due to their aid and closer relations during the war.

But yes, it's obviously not because of any linguistic merit.

[actionfromafar]

Well one empire (sort of empire) defeated another, so it’s related.

[8372049]

The reason German(y) was widely unpopular after WW2 wasn't primarily because they lost.

ETA: They lost WW1 too, but German remained our #1 foreign language.

[dragonwriter]

OTOH, the reason those feelings were free to be expressed...

[Aicy]

The relative power of German speakers (Germany) dropped massively after WW2 compared to English speakers (USA).

[throwaway2037]

It would help if we knew which country. Was this due to (1) pre-WW2 German language mostly useful for trade with Germany, or (2) a significant minority of ethnic Germans, who probably returned to Germany (E/W) after WW2? My guess: #2.

[8372049]

Norway. Just overall friendlier standing with Germany than the UK pre-WW2 I think.

No significant minority of ethnic Germans, and I think trade with Germany and the UK was roughly comparable.

[rblatz]

That’s true of many countries, including The US.

[nitwit005]

It is a bit more complex than that. My father (American) learned German because his mother considered it "the language of science". That attitude is mostly gone.

[sib]

When I studied computer science (which, at my university in the United States was still a part of the mathematics faculty), we were required to study one of German, French, or Russian, as those were historical languages of math.

Seems a bit quaint now - but at least it got me to learn German and even spend six months studying at the University of Heidelberg.

[skissane]

> It is a bit more complex than that. My father (American) learned German because his mother considered it "the language of science". That attitude is mostly gone.

When my dad did his chemistry degrees (a bachelors and a masters by research) in the late 1960s / early 1970s (Australia), they made him do a unit on how to read German, because that is the language of a lot of the older chemistry literature. I don’t think they care anywhere near as much about German in chemistry nowadays, although (from what I understand) learning to read German is still an expectation for some humanities PhDs (such as Egyptology)

[peyton]

The competition was very aggressive, escalating into several Anglo-Dutch wars. The VOC absolutely outcompeted the EIC most of the time. How do you explain the staying power of English given that “imperialism” is the more appropriate context, not “British Imperialism”?

[dragonwriter]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_colonial_empire#/media/F...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire#/media/File:The...

[Aicy]

The Dutch and Portuguese outcompeted the British, until they didn't.

In the 19th and early 20th century the British owned the seas, a post 1945 another English speaking country has - the United States.

[mkoubaa]

Yes. But then the English language got a _lot_ of reps as the lingua franca of commerce and science.

[DoughnutHole]

English became the lingua franca of science because of the decline of German science following the world wars. English became the language of commerce due to the commercial dominance of first the British Empire and then the United States.

So still not really due to some intrinsic merits of the language.

[amadeuspagel]

The anglos won the world wars due to the intrinsic merits of english, not only because war itself requires communication, but also because they were able to mobilize more resources, including the resources of a country full of recent immigrants, who had all already learned english.

[somethingsaid]

But English was dominant because the people who were dominant in those areas spoke English. It’s because of that previous dominance that the allies (you forgot the Soviet Union, China, the Netherlands, and France among others btw) were able to build on that dominance and succeed. Their success built into the post-war growth of English and the US, as they were undamaged and recovered quickly. So I would say that English is dominant because of the back to back successes of English speaking countries, not that their success is because of English.

[amadeuspagel]

Oh, I'm sorry for forgetting the Netherlands, among others.

[mkoubaa]

I'm not saying it deserved to be. I'm saying it has been for a while, and has accumulated advantages over time given that privilege

[irrational]

Don’t forget about Hollywood and the dominance of English-speaking media. And English has been the lingua franca of the Internet. I travelled a bit before the mid 90s and not as many people spoke English in many places as do today.

[amadeuspagel]

The english people became powerful because english is such a good language.

[bombcar]

The wane of the British empire and the waxing of the American one coincides with them dropping the English measurements for metric.

It's not coincidence, it's causal :D

[moffkalast]

I would imagine it was more because of the island/shipbuilding supremacy thing.

[jmac01]

Is it culturally English speaking to think this just sounds like social anxiety rather than an expected norm? If someone thought they were superior than me and expected a particular greeting or whatever, I'd tell them where to shove it lol

We are all equal.

[yongjik]

If you take a complicated social issue and reduce it until it becomes a one-dimensional question, of course it sounds stupid.

Imagine a foreigner learning English and asking "Why do I have to care if people are male or female? What a sexist language! Nobody cares about genitals in my culture!" And they start to refer to everybody as "he", regardless of, well, genitals.

They won't come across as more enlightened, transcending the shackles of sexist English grammar.

They will simply sound like a poor English speaker.

[McBeige]

It's besides the point, but a slight correction: you wouldn't assume someone's preferred pronouns from details about their genitals (it'd be offensive to ask or try to check!), but from how they present them self - through gendered appearance or perhaps by just stating it.

[lupusreal]

If I assumed any woman wearing pants and a tshirt wants to be called a man, I'd offend them more often than not. Guessing somebody is transgender because they aren't conforming to gendered fashion conventions is an extremely bad idea.

[kemayo]

The parent wasn't just talking about the top-level of their clothes, though, but about overall presentation. There's generally a lot more cultural signifiers embedded that you can cue off of than just "pants or skirt?" after all. Haircuts (highly gendered even at similar lengths), subtleties of makeup and jewelry, the cut of the aforementioned t-shirt and pants, body language, etc. (And there's still room to get it wrong, of course. But fortunately people who're living in the gray areas are generally aware they're doing so.)

Explaining all the details of how to distinguish e.g. a butch lesbian from a trans man to someone from a different cultural tradition is, of course, an incredible pain.

[lupusreal]

I've known plenty of women with male or gender neutral clothing, "boy cut" hair and no interest in jewelry. They weren't men. Assuming that a woman is transgender because she isn't "girly" is idiotic.

The number of people, particularly women, who don't adhere to gendered fashion greatly exceeds the number of transgender people.

[willsmith72]

In english workplaces there's still a "heirarchy" it's just not expressed with that one specific word.

If you'd phrase an email differently to a high-level exec vs your coworker, you've experienced it. Same with dressing differently to meet a new client vs an old friendly one. Both cases where you'd probably use the formal and informal depending on who you're talking to.

[vidarh]

I remember the first time I was referred to as "sir" after moving to the UK from Norway.

In Norway it's now rare to come across the equivalent "Herr" other than as an insult (implying you're stuck up), outside of very limited cases, such as instead of "Mr", but that use too is in steep decline.

English is full of ways to express implied hierarchy through different wording / tone without the T-V distinction.

[samus]

Good for you if you live in a culture without strong T-V distinction. Not using the correct form of address will make you need perceived as impolite in the best case or highly disrespectful and confrontational in the worst case, and you will land on their sh*t list. This can be dangerous if you have to interact with police!

PS: even in English, you're probably not using as many F-bombs and S-bombs when you talk to powerful people.

[xyzzyz]

Using polite/formal grammar form is just something that comes completely naturally to native speakers, who practiced it their whole lives, in particular the entire childhood while speaking to adults. It does not put you in a position of inferiority or submission, people will still have nasty arguments or explicitly insult each other while maintaining formal grammar form.

[ozim]

Yeah until you have mortgage to pay, kids and asshole on receiving end can influence your job security then it quickly turns out who is „more equal”.

[throwaway2037]

What is your native language and home country? Would your view change if you spent some time in a language/culture where this is normal (Korea/Japan)?

[Longhanks]

This is very ignorant towards many cultures and such behavior would be actively harming your career in most places I've got to know. You're lucky to be in a place where your lack of empathy towards local etiquette does not result in more peer pressure, for better or for worse.

We are not equal.

[the_omegist]

No idea why you are being downvoted. I think people in some circles and some places hold strongly to their newly crafted dogmas.

No one is equal to no one. I do not see how this can be taken badly at all : absence of equality does not equate to lack of intrinsic merit.

As to the main topic : I think some degree of deference to some people, represented by some specific words, is a good thing, as long as it does not fall into some Byzantine rules that make communication less efficient.

[tonfa]

Good luck trying that with cops in France (who condescendingly will "tu" you while expecting "vous" in return)

[andrepd]

T-V culture is speaking for years in periphrases and passive tense to a semi-acquaintance when you're not sure which form to use and too much time has passed that it's now awkward to ask.

[ghayes]

I’m in a comical situation that me and my Mexican father-in-law mutually refer to each other as usted despite the fact we’d both be better off switching to informal, except for the fact that neither of us want to offend the other by being so casual.

[echaozh]

If tenses are cases are what keeps languages from being global, you should all speak Chinese now, whose words don't change forms at all.

[thaumasiotes]

> you should all speak Chinese now, whose words don't change forms at all

There are some inflectional elements in Chinese.

Speaking for Mandarin:

- Verbs may be inflected into one of three aspects, with the suffixes 着 (progressive), 了 (perfective), or 过 (experiential).

- Certain verbs may be inflected for possibility or impossibility, with the infix 得 (for possibility) or 不 (for impossibility). If the verb is not naturally part of the category that participates in this construction, the dummy particle 了 (which shares spelling, but not pronunciation, with the perfect suffix mentioned above) must be supplied, to convert it into that category.

- Nouns may be inflected for plurality with the suffix 们. As I understand it, this is only really appropriate where the noun refers to a collection of people (broadly defined), but any such noun may receive the suffix.

[moffkalast]

Yeah but doesn't the way you intone a word change the meaning entirely? With how heavy accents are the norm for English second speakers I would think this makes Chinese practically impossible to learn to pronounce. Also 90% of the world can read the latin alphabet already which is a good start when learning a new language. Years ago I made a small attempt to learn some Russian and Cyrillic was like smashing against a brick wall, I imagine it's 200x worse for Chinese since you have to learn 5000 new characters.

[whycome]

Quebec French seems to be in the process of dropping the formal. It’s way less common there than metro/france French.

[jampekka]

In Finnish the formal (second person plural) is almost gone. It's mostly in ceremonial use, or used as a quirk. In Swedish the formal is even more extinct and there was an active campaign to eradicate it in the 1970s.

I very much welcome this development.

[Joblo62]

This so untrue I had to make an account to reply to you.

Quebec french is standardised by the OQLF (Office Québécois de la Langue Française) and the formal/informal distinction is as important in our french as it is in other cultures. The reason it might seem less common is because most conversations people have are informal. In formal settings, it is still expected of people to use "vous" rather than "tu". It is seen as polite and some people might even take offence to the informal being used when they do not know their interlocutor personally.

I don't know where you got that from.

[whycome]

Which part is untrue?

In spoken French, in cases of unfamiliarity it would be more common in France to use the formal “vous” than in a place like Montreal where you’ll see “tu” still used.

When I say it “seems to be in the process” it’s because of how I’ve heard the language spoken. (Admittedly in Montreal and French Ontario and not other parts of Quebec).

Popular French (from France!) YouTuber Loïc Suberville actually notes this difference in a video a couple weeks ago (jump to 1:25 ish).

It’s something he noticed as a “metro French” speaker. And he’s made a career now out of looking at the absurdities of spoken language.

(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PzNHyk2JAas&t=83s)

Yes there is an official “language board” but that’s aspirational and not a law. Language is a reflection of how people use it.

I agree that in a formal conversation people will use “vous” (and we see similar splits of language in English “on the news” vs what people actually use), but there’s way less use of “vous” in Quebec for a lot of situations.

[Sytten]

The part where you say we are dropping it. It is very much alive and just as confusing as ever for settings that are on the fence. I positively hate it. I can't count the number of times where I heard (roughly): Can I continue speaking with you using "tu"?

When I was in high school (10y ago) we were forced to use "vous" when speaking to an adult.

That is why OP said your statement was false.

[whycome]

> The part where you say we are dropping it.

Not quite what I said.

> That is why OP said your statement was false.

There's something ironic here when the nuance of language is lost. Saying something "seems" a certain way is a personal observation. "It seems colder in this room" isn't a false statement if the room is measured and it wasn't actually colder.

> Quebec French seems to be in the process of dropping the formal.

I stand by it. It's an observation from speaking to people. They use 'vous' much less. And it's a comment on the process -- the shift.

> I positively hate it. I can't count the number of times where I heard (roughly): Can I continue speaking with you using "tu"?

I think you're agreeing with me? If situations where the question of whether or not the "formal" is required is becoming less and less inherently obvious, then that's an indicator of the shift. People want to use the comfortable form.

> When I was in high school (10y ago) we were forced to use "vous" when speaking to an adult.

Do you think that younger persons use the form "vous" less and less? Or do you think that they use it just as much as your age group? That's literally the "process" of language -- the younger dictate the rules. Language shifts. And I suspect the high school curriculum is an attempt to 'standardise' and for the 'proper' ways -- but things like the internet and casual speak will work against it. And formal forms may get relegated to professional situations. And, contrary to the poster that said it can seem impolite, I'd argue that one can see the use of the 'formal' forms as "stuck up".

> It’s way less common there than metro/france French.

I think this is actually the statement that could be empirically analyzed if desired. I'm basing it on what metropolitan French speakers say about Quebec French. (eg in the language video).

And since we're talking about "observations of the language" the anecdotes there may be useful.

I noticed a comment that criticized the assertion regarding tu/vous: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzNHyk2JAas&lc=UgzgxoXEIhDXa...) "Wow je suis honnêtement surpris par la fidélité de cette vidéo! Malgré quelques erreurs (notamment qu'on utilise aussi le vous pour parler aux inconnus et parfois même à ses parents/grand-parents, et que tous les Canadiens Français ne sont pas Québécois) tout est véridique, bravo! En plus c'était très divertissant de voir ma culture exposée par un représentant Français qui a fait ses recherches. Il faudrait juste revoir l'imitation de l'accent"

A response: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzNHyk2JAas&lc=UgzgxoXEIhDXa...) "Va en France et tu vas voir que le "vous" est beaucoup plus présent qu'ici. Le vouvoiement est quasi institutionalisé là-bas alors qu'ici c'est un peu laissé chacun pour soi"

And a response to that: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzNHyk2JAas&lc=UgzgxoXEIhDXa...) "En effet, cela dépend beaucoup de la génération et de l'éducation de chacun. Les jeunes ont tendance à tutoyer davantage que les plus âgés. Mes parents (nés dans les années 1920) vouvoyaient leurs parents qui eux se vouvoyaient entre eux. Ma génération (année 60) va tutoyer plus souvent. Je tutoie les plus jeunes mais je vouvoie les plus vieux. Dans les écoles, souvent à l'école primaire les enfants apprennent à tutoyer leurs enseignants. Au secondaire, le vous est habituellement de rigueur. Je suis commis dans un magasin et je vouvoie les clients jeunes ou vieux. Avant d'être commis, j'étais enseignant... maintenant à la retraite. Les jeunes nous approchent souvent en tutoyant... cela me dérange beaucoup. De même, quand je suis client et qu'un commis me tutoie ça m'énerve."

They essentially say that they observe it being used less and less for younger people. That's my observation as well.

So yes, it does seem to me like quebec french is in the process of dropping it. The reduction in usage and relegation to certain settings will be a part of that process. I don't think the "official" language boards get to decide.

We can check back in ...50 years or so?

[Tommstein]

I'm pretty sure they were talking about their impression of trends regarding how people actually talk, not how some literal language lawyers demand they speak. Whether they're actually correct or not, I have no idea and it's beside the point.

[jack2312]

Huh, having learned Spanish as a non-native speaker, I was taught that the two forms had more to do with the closeness of the relationship than they did with some sort of social rank or superiority.

For example, a family member who you would address as "sir" (at least in the Southern U.S.), maybe a parent or grandparent, might be taken aback if you addressed them with the formal "usted" in Spanish, because it didn't imply respect, but that you didn't consider the person close. Another example would be prayer, where God is definitely superior to us, but you would address Him with the less formal "tu", because the love He has for us makes that a close and personal relationship. (I'm not even sure that the word "formal" is the right one to use here, as like I say, it's not quite the same as in English.)

You could also have a business conversation where you'd use "usted" without necessarily implying respect, because "tu" sounds out of place for a distant relationship like that. (I.e. using "tu" wouldn't be disrespectful, so much as it would just be weird or akward.)

Am I misunderstanding the usage of the two forms, or could someone enlighten me a bit more on the subject? Is the dynamic similar in other T-V languages, or is it used more to denote social status/tiers?

[moffkalast]

Not sure about Spanish, but in Slavic/Germanic languages it's as OP says, the plural form tends to show more respect for e.g. talking to a stranger, especially an older one. Students typically address teachers this way and teachers don't do it in return, until university where students are considered old enough and it's typically done mutually. People of the same age that know each other almost always just use singular form.

There are actually three forms if we're completely exact: singular 2nd person, plural 2nd person, and plural 3rd person. German uses the first and last, Slavic languages have all three but the third is very dated and practically unused by now.

[mijamo]

It is not that easy and depends a lot on context. I know people who use "usted" to their grandparents (who use "tu" in returns), but at the same time you have lots of shops where they will say "tu" to their customers (particularly clothing, not so much for restaurants). Depends a lot of the country/region and even family.

[jack2312]

Thank you to those who responded! If you happen to see this, do you know if the behavior you describe is more common in Europe, rather than the Americas? (Just out of curiosity.) Most of the people I know who speak Spanish are from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean (Puerto Rico or Cuba), and occasionally from South America. Rarely do I get to meet people from other areas, so I'm not sure if this is something I've failed to notice, or if it's maybe due to a regional difference.

Also, am I correct in my understanding that prayer is done nearly universally in "tu"? (I know some Argentinos who use "vos" for informal circumstances, but still use "tu" for prayer, but rarely anywhere else.) Could you help me to better understand the reasons behind this?

Thank you again for your response! It's a beautiful thing to have the opportunity to learn about other cultures from the people who live them.

[alentred]

I have a colleague who comes from a culture with a T-V distinction and lives in France where it also exists. But the line we would draw between "toi" and "vous" in French is quite different from his culture: he apparently has a more formal "framework" for T-V and he uses "vous" much more often than others would, so it often creates some distance.

So, T-V distinction is also very cultural in a sense where the line between the two is.

[cmrdporcupine]

Thing is, it's not like the semantics and tone of formal speaking or speaking with deference is missing in English. It just doesn't take the form of special pronouns or conjugations, etc.

Native speakers at least are capable of picking up on all sorts of nuance in word choice and tone

Give it a couple hundred years, all the subtle or not-so-subtle nuances will standardize and settle into grammar constructs.

[felipellrocha]

Funny enough, i never noticed that english feature because PT-BR is similar, we only use Voce instead of Tu.

[ricardobayes]

In Central Europe at the turn of the 20th century it was the norm for husband and wife to talk to each other in the formal "V" form.

Today that would be completely unimaginable.

[WirelessGigabit]

In Flanders, Belgium there is a slow adoption of T.

But what is weird is that the V is used in BOTH contexts. The T is used in the Netherlands but slowly more and more people in Flanders are adopting the T version in written language.

And it irks me. Companies sending you a letter addressing you with the T version, like we're friends.

I don't want to be addressed by V for reasons of respect. I don't want to be addressed with T for reasons of not wanting to be infantilized.

[toolslive]

Education has been trying to kill the "ge/gij" form for decades by ignoring its existence. In Flanders, they are not really succeeding. Everybody still uses it in spoken form. However, the number of people knowing how to conjugate it properly in written form is decreasing. "Gij hadt" fe, is correct but rarely encountered .

[WirelessGigabit]

"Gij loopt". Base + t. That's how I learned it.

Do you know why education is trying to do this? I find that as it infiltrates business communication that it encourages a language that sounds like we're friends. We're not. I'm a person. You're a company who is overcharging me for basic things like internet. No need for informal cosy language.

[toolslive]

(now try the past tense, there's plenty of weird stuff with strong verbs "zijn" becomes "Gij waart"). To answer the question: everything language related is dominated by the Dutch. Take fe dictionaries. Van Dale dominates the market and has a habit of annotating everything that's not considered "proper" Dutch as "Belg.Nl." I have a feeling Flemish Dutch and Dutch Dutch were more one language in the 1970s than now. They're drifting apart.

[elric]

Just to add to this:

The T form (jij/je) sounds infantile in Flemish because it is infantile. The real T form in Flemish is gij/ge. But it's somewhat archaic and some people look down on it, so it's rarely used in written conversation. In many cases, the jij/je-form is used when talking to children or used by children. Once they grow up a bit, they tend to use the gij/ge form for informal conversation, and jij/je for slightly more polite conversation.

It's a bit different in the Netherlands, where the archaic forms are more rare outside of Brabant, and where reality more closely matches the textbook T-forms.

Companies addressing me using the infantile form doesn't bother me. What I find much more annoying is companies trying to be cutesy, with random slang thrown in their communications It always gives me "How do you do, fellow kids"-vibes.

I only very rarely encounter anyone talking in the V-forms. It's more common in the written form.

Being a bit of a contrarian, I refuse to write in the jij/je T-form, and consistently stick to the archaic gij/ge.

TL;DR: Flemish has 2 T-forms and one V-form, but the newer T-form is sometimes a V-form. Languages are fun.

[WirelessGigabit]

First of all, thanks for reminding me about ge/gij. I am born in Flanders, raised in Flemish, and lived there for 28 years and I forgot about that.

When I was growing up people did not address me with je/jij. My mom was a teacher. Ge/gij all the time.

And if you want to be polite you would switch to u/u.

And I get the same vibes as you do. But since ge/gij is not suitable for formal communication I insist on using u/u. This also increases the barrier to use any kind of infantile cosy language.

'Wees gerust' just irks me.