"Pax Vobiscum" was the headline of the April 3rd Chicago Tribune editorial as a memorial to the Pope. Yet, it brought a lot of discussion.
Do you think it is "Pax vobiscum" or "Pax tecum?"
In their defense, another Tribune writer said that "pluralis maiestatis"--as a polite "you"--is still alive today in the Italian "voi," the French "vous," and the Argentinian "vos." Interesting...we don't have a polite "you" in English.
Originally posted by Kalleh: Interesing. So, in past times when people used "thou" and "thee" did it function as a polite "you?" Or... was it used instead of "you?"
The opposite way round I believe. You was the polite form and thou and thee the common ones. I'm sure arnie will tell me if I got that wrong.
The French have a word, tutoyer, which means "to use 'thee' and 'thou' when speaking [to someone]".Normally only family members and close friends would use tu with each other, although young children and dogs are also addressed in that way quite often.
If you were to address a French taxi driver as tu he'd be quite insulted.
The situation is similar with the discussion over "pax vobiscum/tecum". The Pope is the holy father, and as a father would address his children with the Latin vocative singular, if he were being ultra-polite he might use the plural.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!
Thou and its other forms is the second person singular informal pronoun. You is the formal. Something even worse, in long term effects, is to switch back to the formal in a language like German or French once you have been on intimate du or tu terms. Now that's an insult!
The way I understand it is, and this is from a linguistics book of some sort:
Nobility only used thee and thou amongst their families, and when speaking with commoners, used you and your. The commoners felt that by aping the nobles speech patterns, they seemed more sophisticated. This led to the eventually death of the terms thee and thou among the common public. Eventually, only the nobility used them, and dropped them in an attempt to appeal to the common man.
I'm not entirely sure of the voracity of this story, since the Iniut have only about a dozen words for snow, but it makes enough sense to bring up.
The article on thou in Wikipedia talks about Sir Walter Raleigh's trial where Sir Edward Coke tried to insult him by saying: "I thou thee, thou traitor!." Turning a personal pronoun into a verb.
Browsing over his CV leads me to believe he has had quite the ambitious crop of grad students over the years. No one could possibly publish that many papers on his own. I don't recall having heard the name in the numerous linguistics texts/courses I've taken, but that probably doesn't mean much. I'll have to read up on his posts to Language Log.
Reviving a thread... We've been over the hoax on Eskimo snow words before (in several threads, actually), but Nathan Bierma had this excellent review today in his column; I thought you might enjoy it. I apologize if you can't access the link, but you can register for the online Chicago Tribune free, if you wish.
I don't recall having heard the name in the numerous linguistics texts/courses I've taken, but that probably doesn't mean much.
He's best know for his columns in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory which became his justly popular book The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language and his work in developing GPSG, especially in Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar in collaboration with Gerald Gazdar, Ewan Klein, and Ivan Sag. Of course, these days, he's posting on Language Log, hurrah.
I quite enjoyed that rant. I always enjoy the rantings of people who, while being fairly articulate, feel that their opinions should be unhindered by anything as mundane as facts.
If he wants any further evidence for his "thesis" I'd suggest someone supplies him with videotapes of the current series of Big Brother (UK version). I don't watch it myself but having read the furore in the press about the racism in it I watched a few minutes. It seems that they have taken an intelligent, cultured, articulate, successful Bollywood Actress and placed her into an environment full of inarticulate, loudmouthed, obnoxious morons who have proceded with the predictable monosyllabic grunted abuse. The few minutes I watched (I couldn't stomach any more) featured queen moron Jade Goody who is apparently incapable of stringing together even the simplest of coherent sentences. Her inane wittering ("I inna racist. I din min it bad like. Why they say I min it bad? It's the midja innit? I inna racist. I inna.) would make perfect evidence for the author of that blog.
Gads, I feel like an idiot! I plodded through the Swedish, trying to recall what little I once knew, finally figured it out right, THEN scrolled down and found it translated!
Oh, BTW, the word he thought the Swedes should have, as I remember it, is something like "knullar." I probably spelled it wrong, though.
It gave me a chuckle, too. I liked Crystal's calling prescriptivists "linguistic stalinists". There's a bit of an inside joke there. There was a Soviet (Georgian) linguist in the '30s by the name of Nikholaj Marr. He was a crazy guy, and he ghost wrote one of Stalin's Marxist linguistic works. (Papa Joe turned against Marr later as he did with so many of his fellow travelers.) He invented a whole new kind of linguistics, called Japhetics, that pigeonholed all kinds of round linguistic phenomena into all kinds of squarish Marxist holes. Really quite a modern guy. He'd probably have a national column in the New York Times or the Chicago Tribune.
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