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

Julia "Schnecki" Simon skrev:
 > Hello!
 >> On 10/20/06, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:

 >> My guess is more that *German* advertising people at
 >> Ikea thought using 'Du' would be cool when they learned
 >> that the Swedish are so much more 'relaxed'. Something
 >> like that.
 >
 >
 > Considering the degree of cheerful idiocy evident in the
 > IKEA commercials I've seen on German TV, it seems
 > plausible that this idea of "obligatory Du" would come
 > from the same people. :-P
 >> SCNR,
 >             Julia 8-)
 >   PS. I have to do damage control for my German friends
 >       and relatives all the time -- no, almost nobody here
 >       wears horned helmets; no, a realistic Swedish (or
 >       otherwise Scandinavian) accent sounds NOTHING like
 >       that, I have no idea where that actor comes from;
 >       no, we don't have a spring festival called
 >       Flabberghasten (or whatever) that involves throwing
 >       old furniture out of third-storey windows and most
 >       certainly not subsequently buying new furniture at
 >       the nearest IKEA; and so on.

OMG! Do they *really* do stuff like that? I don't know which
annoys me most of horned helmets and Swedish Chef accents...

I'll pass over the fact that I have to put on a fake typical
Swedish accent when speaking German to Germanophones who
don't know me. As I learnt German from my native speaker
mother as a small child I have no accent, sensu_stricto to
speak about, but due to having practically ceased to use my
German at age 7 my grammar is atrocious. The combined effect
of perfect accent, atrocious grammar and obviously having
cerebral palsy isn't a pleasant one.

 > PPPS. Now that we've practised the fine art of
 >       postscripting, we can continue with the next lesson:
 >       writing a scientific paper that consists almost
 >       entirely of footnotes. ;-)

I suppose you're familiar with the innovative plural
_fotnötter_? I never managed to figure out if it means that
they're hard nut to crack, or that they are written by
people who are nuts. What is obvious is that young people
nowadays take the invective _nöt_ to be 'nut' rather than
'cattle', in spite of the neuter gender; probably because
they're not aware of the 'cattle' _nöt_ at all. (To those
that don't know Swedish: the proper plural of _fotnot_ is
_fotnoter_; the joke plural is based on the pattern
_fot::fötter_ 'foot::feet'.)

I must also mention my comparative philology professor, who
said to a fellow student: "You don't read the footnotes? It
would be better if you *only* read the footnotes!", but when
he had explained that it is there you'll find the most
controversial, and hence most interesting stuff, he couldn't
give any IMO good reason not to put it into the main text --
with hedges of course.

BTW: can someone of you computer people explain to me why it
would be a good idea to write a program almost entirely
consisting of subroutines -- i.e. the 'main' program
practically only calls a single subroutine, which then calls
a number of other subroutines, which in turn call other
subroutines...?

/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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