Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

German 'duzen' and 'siezen' — etymology?

From:Steven Williams <feurieaux@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 11, 2006, 1:40
Recently having written a brief paper for my German
Composition class on the usage of the German
second-person pronouns 'du' and 'Sie', I've been
curious as of late as to the etymology of the verbs
'duzen' and 'siezen'.

At first, I thought they were worn-down compounds with
'tun' — something like *du tun and *Sie tun, but for a
number of reasons, I realized that was probably wrong
— for one, a couple of German sound laws would have to
be violated to make this work; and two, *du tun and
*Sie tun sound _really_ stupid in German.

Can anyone shed some light on this?


	

	
		
___________________________________________________________
Der frühe Vogel fängt den Wurm. Hier gelangen Sie zum neuen Yahoo! Mail: http://mail.yahoo.de

Reply

Julia "Schnecki" Simon <helicula@...>German 'duzen' and 'siezen' — etymology?