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

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@...>