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nim_opet t1_itjq30g wrote

Reply to comment by Internauta29 in The way people speak in The Count of Monte Cristo. Can someone explain? by foxdna

All Slavic and Germanic languages except for English and Swedish have it too.

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Sabbath90 t1_itknqv5 wrote

We did have it in Sweden but it fell out of fashion mid 1900's, now people will look at you funny if you use the formal/plural "ni" when speaking to someone. Unless it's the king, that's the one exception.

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nim_opet t1_itkqvyx wrote

Oh well, at least for the King then :)

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Sacred_Root t1_itk0m44 wrote

English does but isn't emphasized as much as in the romance languages. Also probably why the non-binary movement is so big in the US, also.

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nim_opet t1_itk1bcm wrote

What does non-binary have to do with distinction between singular and plural “you”?

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Sacred_Root t1_itk1l5g wrote

That's one of their reasonings for the non binary pronouns.

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nim_opet t1_itk5fzw wrote

No it isn’t. Gendered pronouns have nothing to do with 2nd person plural one.

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Sacred_Root t1_itkkc1m wrote

You misunderstood what I was saying and i have no invested interest in trying to explain it to you. Idgaf about the topic enough to care either way.

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Sacred_Root t1_itk1sd3 wrote

Identifying by they/them instead of he or she.

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nim_opet t1_itk5ixt wrote

None of that has anything to do with the polite version of “you”. Those are genders of third person personal pronouns. The “tu/vous” distinction is specifically about the 2nd person pronoun and how it changes in singular vs. plural. 2nd person pronoun is not gendered.

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Sacred_Root t1_itkjrkj wrote

Tell them that. Not me. You misunderstood what I was saying, anyway.

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Nice_Sun_7018 t1_itl66a0 wrote

I guess we all misunderstood you then lol. “They/them” is in use because English doesn’t have a gender-neutral singular pronoun. If we did, we would use it. Since we don’t, we use the plural gender-neutral term (and we have always done this when the gender of the singular subject is unknown, too, not just for non-binary people).

This, as others have tried to tell you, has nothing to do with a language having a formal versus non-formal word for “you” (which typically comes in both singular and plural forms).

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