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Re: Second person/polite pronouns (fuit Re: Another Ozymandias)

From:Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Date:Friday, July 28, 2006, 9:05
On 7/27/06, Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:
> From: "Paul Roser" <pkroser@...> > > > I'm having > > difficulty envisioning a language with a pronoun that doesn't distinguish > > person or number... > > Well, Sie in German (takes same verbal ending as sie plural)... a huge > confusion to me always in spoken German. Context is all.
Not bad -- the same forms are used for 2sg, 2pl, and 3pl. Confusing for Germans even in writing, occasionally -- the most common mistake being to capitalise 3pl "Sie", usually leading to a rather humorous meaning. To make up a random example, someone might write "Erdbeeren müssen in Stroh gepackt werden bevor Sie exportiert werden", which means, "Strawberries must be packed in straw before you are exported". The intended meaning being, of course, "... before *they* are exported" (which would require "...bevor *sie* exportiert werden" with lower-case "sie"). And then there's "sie" which is 3sg.f. ... though the verbal forms are different. Maybe people should start using "sie" for first person as well, just to add to the confusion. One single general-purpose pronoun. Or extend it to 3sg.m. & 3sg.n. at least, so that the pronoun distinction in German would be "1st" vs "non-1st", a bit like the past-nonpast distinction in some languages' tense systems. Cheers, -- Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>