Re: Old Norse (was Re: New to the list)

Nik Taylor wrote:

> "Thomas R. Wier" wrote:
> > Sounds reasonable.  That's about contemporary with the early period of the
> > rise of Britain's bourgeoisie.
>
> Except, you have to explain why the British bourgeoisie caused the loss
> of formal/familiar you, but not the same loss in any other European
> language.  In other European langs, the rules for determining formal
> forms versus familiar forms were simply modified.
Because Britain was one of the first nationstates in Europe to have a bourgeois
revolution -- the English Civil War.  Remember who fought in that war?
It was the traditional elite versus the up and coming capitalist class, who
after their victory for a brief period completely eliminated their competition
by abolishing the House of Lords and the Monarchy itself.  (Sure, it was
cast in religious terms, but that was the official dogma at the time.  Every
age has its official dogmas, and most arguments get distilled into dogmatic
formulations at some time or another; we do the same thing with democracy
and capitalism today.)

After the war, the new elite captured a position of authority for itself, and
permanently weakened the power of the Monarchy.  It was then, and ever
after, in a position to demand respect for itself.  It's easy to imagine in such
a situation that they would encode their egalitarianism into the language in
precisely the opposite way languages on the continent were encoding the
increasing strength of traditional elites into their own languages.  German,
for example, during the age of Frederick the Great, had IIRC three or
four distinct pronouns for speaking to people of different social classes
from yourself (I know there were:  Du/lowest;  Ihr/middling;  Sie/highest).

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: trwier
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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