Re: Interesting Pronouns.

Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
> Minimalizing pronoun use is also a possibility, though not featuring them
> at all would be very extreme; I gather many languages prefer to use
> personal names and/or status-indicating nouns. So you might address someone
> of higher status as "lord" or "elder" or "master" or whatever, and yourself
> as "servant", "inferior", "slave", or something
Japanese likes to do that, so much so that whatever its original
pronouns were have been long since forgotten, and for as long as we have
written records, Japanese has repeated created very humble first person
pronouns and very respectful second person pronouns, which have
gradually become more colloquial, until eventually they're lost.  For
instance:
1st person
Boku: Originally meant "servant", now a casual male pronoun
Wata(ku)shi: Meant "private", now a neutral or slightly polite pronoun
Atashi: Female casual pronoun, derived from _watashi_
2nd person
Kimi: Originally meant "lord", now a casual pronoun, used especially
when addressing inferiors or children.
3rd person
Kare: He, lit. "That one"; until about a hundred years ago, it was
non-gender-specific
Kanojo: She, lit. "That woman", invented about a hundred years ago under
Western influence
Sono hito: Lit. "That person"
Sono kata: More formal, lit. "That direction"

Not sure about origins of other pronouns.

But Japanese also prefers to use simply names in place of pronouns.

I experimented with that kind of system in a Romance conlang, so that,
for instance, _snao_ was a polite second person pronoun.  _Snao_ was
derived from _Snato_ < _sena:tor_, that word having come to be used for
"gentleman".

> ; and family members by
> their position within the family (perhaps not relative, so that the mother
> addresses her husband as "father"
Japanese I believe does that if there are children.  In fact, in "Words
in Context", the author gives an example of a woman addressing her
daughter as "mother".

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