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Re: German 'duzen' and 'siezen' - etymology ?

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <bpjonsson@...>
Date:Saturday, October 21, 2006, 9:19
Andreas Johansson skrev:
> Quoting Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...>: > >> Den 20. okt. 2006 kl. 11.41 skrev Henrik Theiling: >>> But I really get annoyed by Ikea having started to >>> address their customers as 'Du' on all the signs. >>> Probably that's considered much more cool(tm) and >>> dynamic(tm). It feels like an insult to me -- I don't >>> know them anonymous advertising and managing people and >>> my only potential interest is of purely commercial >>> nature, so 'Du' is totally out of place. >> Is this specific for Ikea or do you see it in other >> advertising as well? Maybe it's something the Ikea people >> are taking with them from Sweden. Swedes are a little >> more formal than Norwegians, but not much. In Norway the >> duzen-siezen divide has all but disappeared. You hardly >> even use the 'polite' pronoun to the king. > > Hehe. In Sweden, you're not supposed to use a pronoun at > all when addressing the king, but to say _kungen_ "the > king" all the time.
Which I, as a republican -- in the anti-monarchial as opposed to the American party-political sense -- am not quite sure how I should react to. It beats _Ers Majestät_ any day, of course.
>> There is some tendency for reviving it, but very weak. >> The feeling I get if someone tries to say 'De' to me is >> one of unfriendliness. > > Similarly here. I do tend to switch to _ni_ when > addressing adult strangers, but some find even that > disagreeable. Of course, as I imagine BP will jump in to > point out, the use of the sg _ni_ has a somewhat > convoluted history in Swedish, since there was a period > when it was the formal way of addressing people not > important enough to have a title.
IIRC I've ranted about that more than once, so why should I repeat myself. Search the archives! Suffice it to say that I have a very negative gut reaction to singular _ni_, which has nothing to do with its convoluted history so much as signalling sniffiness, just as Lars said : The feeling I get if someone tries to say 'De' to me is : one of unfriendliness. from a Norwegian POV. When reading Henrik's statement that | It feels like an insult to me -- I don't know them | anonymous advertising and managing people and my only | potential interest is of purely commercial nature, so 'Du' | is totally out of place. it occurred to me that in contemporary Swedish the equivalent is to over-use a persons first name when addressing them, as when telemarketers put "Benct" into every sentence, implying an intimacy which doesn't exist. Consequently using a person's first name when addressing them is an important way of signalling intimacy in Swedish, at least for this speaker, and indeed I find myself using my family's first names a lot. A kind of equivalent of the English use of first vs. last names, although here it is use vs. non-use of first names. Do you (Andreas) have the same perception, and does it apply to Norwegian too, Lars and Taliesin? BTW the best way to counter unwanted use of _ni_ is to answer in the first person singular. Puts them off totally. I'm not sure what the equivalent strategy with unwanted Norwegian _De_, or unwanted German _du_, or over-use of personal names might be, although with sales-persons plural _ni_ (referring to the company as a collective) is of some use. Any suggestions? /BP 8^)> -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot (Max Weinreich) -- /BP 8^)> -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot (Max Weinreich)

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Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>