UniLang

vijayjohn wrote:

linguoboy wrote:I always remember hearing about the time my brother's mother-in-law was in El Corte Inglés (a big department store) in Madrid and a young clerk addressed her with tú. Her response was, "You haven't been in my living room!"

Interesting. So the age difference wasn't as much of an issue for her as (lack of) familiarity?

I get the impression that tuteo is generally reciprocal among adults. We're talking a gap of 30 years at most.

linguoboy wrote:

vijayjohn wrote:

linguoboy wrote:I always remember hearing about the time my brother's mother-in-law was in El Corte Inglés (a big department store) in Madrid and a young clerk addressed her with tú. Her response was, "You haven't been in my living room!"

Interesting. So the age difference wasn't as much of an issue for her as (lack of) familiarity?

I get the impression that tuteo is generally reciprocal among adults. We're talking a gap of 30 years at most.

I see.

In Malayalam, it's totally different from that; I think even a difference of one year is enough to be significant. A child addressing someone older with the wrong pronoun would actually be more understandable than an adult doing the same thing, because children aren't always aware of these distinctions (or people's ages).

Personally, when someone adresses me with "tú" it's completely normal to me, friendly, and I feel I'am on the same ground as the other person, like an equal, and we respect each other. When someone treats me with "Usted", I feel as if the other person is considering me very, very old, or very, very different from him/her for some unknown reasons which makes me feel annoyed and insecure. And moreover, that forces me on treating him/her back with "usted" which makes the conversation awkward and makes the distance gap between us even wider.

That is not the case at all in Andalusia, I must say. It's perfectly normal here to treat each other with usted if the two people are unknown to each other. This is changing, but more slowly than in other parts of Spain.

The El Corte Inglés story surprised me, since clerks in that department store usually behave in a very traditional way.

El Corte Inglés? When that place opened people were like "wow!" here. But I never hear anyone talking about it nowadays, even though it's probably still popular. The thing is, it's quite an expensive place, so people would rather go to the mall.

They opened the first one in Lisbon and it was a success. The 2nd one was opened in Gaia, which is near Oporto, but it was a failure due to being built in a not so accessible area or something. Dunno if the chain has opened more throughout the country since then, but I remember talks of it being promised in every district capital.

I guess it's nice to buy certain things you find easier there due to the big amount of variety, but people would rather buy books, clothing and video games in other places.

What about the minority languages of Spain, do you use the T-V distinction in them in the same way as you do in Spanish in that region or do they follow their own customs?

Johanna wrote:What about the minority languages of Spain, do you use the T-V distinction in them in the same way as you do in Spanish in that region or do they follow their own customs?

I can only speak about Catalan, and I'd say the customs are the same in both languages, at least in the Valencian Land. In colloquial Catalonian Catalan it's like that too (if I'm not wrong), even though there's a 2nd V form that's only used in formal written language (vós, the one with a plural verb form).

I'd bet in Galician it's the same as in Spanish, but from what I've read it's much more complicated in Basque, having their original T form completely displaced by the V one, or sth like that. I'm sure Lur or Lauren can give more information on it (I recall Lur explaining it some months ago).

My understanding is that the T-V distinction is maintained in some (rural?) parts of the Basque country but otherwise only the V form is used.

loqu wrote:

Johanna wrote:What about the minority languages of Spain, do you use the T-V distinction in them in the same way as you do in Spanish in that region or do they follow their own customs?

I can only speak about Catalan, and I'd say the customs are the same in both languages, at least in the Valencian Land. In colloquial Catalonian Catalan it's like that too (if I'm not wrong), even though there's a 2nd V form that's only used in formal written language (vós, the one with a plural verb form).

I'd bet in Galician it's the same as in Spanish, but from what I've read it's much more complicated in Basque, having their original T form completely displaced by the V one, or sth like that. I'm sure Lur or Lauren can give more information on it (I recall Lur explaining it some months ago).

Thanks

vijayjohn wrote:My understanding is that the T-V distinction is maintained in some (rural?) parts of the Basque country but otherwise only the V form is used.

Like in English then? The loss of 'thou' was caused by that, right?

There are dialects in England that still have a singular-plural distinction at the very least, if not a T-V one. But they're all but dead anyway.

Johanna wrote:Like in English then? The loss of 'thou' was caused by that, right?

I guess so.

There are dialects in England that still have a singular-plural distinction at the very least, if not a T-V one. But they're all but dead anyway.

Really, they are? I've certainly seen that in the Yorkshire and Cumberland dialects...but yeah, maybe you're right about them being moribund or at least endangered.

loqu wrote:but from what I've read it's much more complicated in Basque, having their original T form completely displaced by the V one, or sth like that. I'm sure Lur or Lauren can give more information on it (I recall Lur explaining it some months ago).

The way I was taught, in Standard Basque there's basically one form that you use with almost everyone (zu) that's etymologically V and then an extra T form that you can only use with close friends (hi). "Hi" is not really a T form anymore because it's very marked and is used in pretty limited contexts. I remember the teacher in Introducció al Basc at the UB said that a non-native (who was more or less fluent) once used "hi" with him and he felt weirded out because even though they were the same age they weren't really close.

And also, in Spain you hear "culo" on TV. While that is considered a vulgar word in Italian.