One of my random thoughts: I've been thinking about the French language lately since I'll have to speak it all the time very soon. In French, there are two forms of "you". There is an informal and a formal form, which also doubles as singular and plural forms. Of course, in English, there is one. "You". Obviously. But it's actually been bothering me lately. Like, I feel rude when I use the word "you" with someone I do not know well, or an adult, or just someone I should be super duper polite to. For example, today I went to go babysit like I do every week. And I met the grandmother. And I just felt so impolite saying "you" to her. Which sounds really weird, but that's just how I felt. I felt like there should be another, more polite word to use. But due to the failure of the English language, there isn't another word. The English language has a lot of flaws. But I'm not going to get into that now.
That was slightly ramble-ish but I that's how my brain works I guess. I've also been thinking about how often I end sentences with prepositions... Wow I am a nerd... What kind of 18 year old girl thinks about stuff like that? But every time I do it, I think about how wrong it is and how I should fix it. But then I don't feel like going back and changing the entire sentence around to make it okay.
Anyway, I really am rambling now. The point of this post was to say OMGILEAVEIN21DAYS!!!! And I did that hehe :)
*Here's a little tidbit. . . In English we actually do have both thou (tu) and you (vous).
ReplyDeleteAnd anyway, don't sweat this stuff to much. For example in Argentina I used the formal usted (vous) to my university professor and she got really offended because in Argentine the formal 'you' is only used with people who are much older - she called me out on it in front of the whole class.
And a friend of mine from the South of France told me that in her city everyone goes around speaking to each other tutoiment, pretty informally, but when she was in Paris, she spoke to the newspaper saleskid whom she saw everyday in 'tu,' and everyone turned around and stared.
It's something you'll learn when you get there, and it's just as hard to for natives as for us - imagine my native language Hindi that has THREE ways of saying 'you.' :)
ॐ Gaurav.