[Lexicog] The Irony of Thou

[Hayim Sheynin]

Dear Bruno,

As you can see the changes in Brazilean Portuguese remind the situation I described in Hebrew and Russian. However the change in Brazil came about 200
years later.

Hayim Y. Sheynin 

Bruno Maroneze <maronezebruno at yahoo.com.br> wrote:                                  
Dear colleagues,
   
  "However I do not know the reason of disappearance of the polite form in Nicaraguan Spanish and if so, probably in additional Spanish dialects of Latin America. Maybe somebody else on the list can enlighten me."
   
  Maybe it would help you to know that Brazilian Portuguese already almost completely lost the opposition polite/familiar form in the pronouns. There were two forms: "tu/vós" (singular/plural familiar form) and "você/vocês" (singular polite/plural form). The form "você/vocês" has been always used with third-person form verbs.
  In Brazil, the form "vós" is already completely disappeared. The form "tu" with second-person form verbs survives only in some very local dialects. The form "você/vocês" is used and understood all over the country, and there is also a large (though not generalized) usage of the form "tu" with the verb in third-person form, probably an  overgeneralization of the form "você".
  As the form "você" is now familiar, Brazilian Portuguese created another polite form: "o senhor" (masculine) / "a senhora" (feminine), which means, literally, "the lord, the mister" / "the lady, the mistress". Instead of saying "você quer café?" ("do you want coffee?"), we say "o senhor quer café?" (literally "the lord wants coffee?")
  This redefining of personal pronouns has caused changes in the verb system, in the possessive pronoun system and probably in many other aspects of the language.
  The general explanation for that phenomenon is the change in social relations, but probably there are other factors.
  Best regards,
  Bruno
           

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