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

Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpjonsson@...>:

> FWIW honorific 1st person pronouns occur in natlangs
> -- usually as "deference forms", but are there 'aloofness
> forms' too, at least in some conlang?
Isn't this what Japanese _chin_ is? It is, IIUC, a 1st sg pronoun only used by
the Emperor.

Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpjonsson@...>:

> One interresting aspect of this is that when the system
> eventually was abolished people started using the familiar
> second person singular pronoun _du_ to everyone.  There
> had been some use of the second person plural _ni_
> with singular reference on the French model, but this
> had been associated with people who didn't wish to
> draw attention to their 'lowly' occupation, yet be
> formal towards one another, and so this usage was
> frowned upon by practitioners of the occupational
> title addressing system.  FWIW the use of singular
> _ni_ has bcome in vogue in later years among younger
> people who want to affect social distance or
> 'uppity'.  I and many with me frown on it as being
> stuck-up rather than polite.  I usually answer such
> address in the first person plural, and AFAIK none
> of these pompous brats has understood what I was
> doing.  Of course they don't know about the
> _pluralis majestatis_ any more than they know about
> the real stylistic value of the "V-forms" in Swedish.
FYI, this pompous brat is fully aware of the _pluralis majestatis_.

Back to honorifics in conlangs, I've not got any yet, but I'm considering
putting some into Meghean. Meghean being Meghean, it'll have to be some rather
baroque system ...

                                       Andreas