[Lexicog] Re: The irony of thou

[Hayim Sheynin]

Fritz,

You remind me that there are many ways to express the  respect. love or tenderness aside from use of different personal pronouns.
For example traditional Arab address to a wife is: O daughter of my uncle!
In the older days a Jew writing to his wife addressed: Ayyelet ha-shahar (O [my]
morning gazelle. The respectful address to the parents: O my teacher parent owner of this house and O my  teacher  mother mistress of this house (with slight variations.  A regular Israeli today  use address  Metukka sheli (O my sweet [one]) to his wife which roughly coinsides with Honey of Americans, etc.

Simple people in USA use address: Boss, rarer Chief (or formal Sir) to show respect or to express  irony. If they would have today  distinction You/Thou they would not need to use this form of address. 

Hayim Sheynin
 

Fritz Goerling <Fritz_Goerling at sil.org> wrote:                                          
  I have worked with an African language which, of course, does not have the you/thou (tu/vous) distinction but where respect and politeness is expressed by other means. Some wives still address their husbands as “my master” like Sara to Abraham in the Bible. The younger generation does not do that any more, but wives cannot address their husbands by their first names. They might address him by “father of my children” or “older brother”.
  I know of couple where the husband is African and the wife Caucasian. He is significantly older. They speak French with one another. In public he wants her to address him by “vous.”
  Maybe someone should write a book on forms of address in different languages. As this thread is entitled “The irony of thou”, one could spin this further and ask about “thou/vous/usted” used in irony or sarcasm. But that information would probably not be included in a dictionary.
   
  Fritz
   
   
  Bill Poser wrote:
  
 On another aspect of this, I knew a French couple in which the
 husband used tu toward his wife while she used vous toward her
 husband. Even the oldest people I know regarded this as odd.
 It isn't clear if it is really archaic or just idiosyncratic.
 The man was 15 years older than his wife, who was his former
 secretary, and of a rather authoritarian bent. (He subscribed to
 the newspaper of the monarchist-fascist movement and expressed
 agreement with its editorials.)
 
 
  
      
     
                       

       
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