Comments on: Breakthru

By: tikitu

tikitu — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:47:44 +0000

“Plural formal is hardly ever used”: that’s what I mean. If I’m talking to two people who I address with “u”, should I “jullie” them? Seems strange to me, but apparently that’s the system.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:52:59 +0000

Plural formal is hardly ever used, but if you want to, it is the same as the singular. In fact maybe in the situations in which you would address a crowd formally, it does not matter whether they feel addressed as indvidual or as group (like in English you has no separate plural).

By: tikitu

tikitu — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:46:14 +0000

I’m always a bit lost with plural-and-formal at the same time: u/jullie, moet/moeten, how does it work again? Het/de I’ve given up on, and I assume I’m doing zou/zal perfectly which quite probably means I’m not.

By: Kimberley

Kimberley — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:45:29 +0000

My sympathies. When I went back to NL, I had more or less the same problem. Though I did remember when I was supposed to be using u, I was a bit rubbish at conjugating whichever verb went with it. It was right up there with het/de and zou/zal wrt nuisance level.

By: tikitu

tikitu — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:12:42 +0000

Believe me, if you come to this unprepared 2p is also a weird.

But yeah, the delightful thing about these systems is that when they're familiar they give you all those nuances. Translating that sort of thing must be ... exciting.

By: S. glaber

S. glaber — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 23:09:38 +0000

In formal Swedish you have the option of second person plural or, oddly, third person singular. At the end of Moominpappa at Sea, Moominmamma asks the lighthousekeeper (literally) 'would he like a cup of coffee' (or something similar).

There's also a great scene in Bergman's Wild Strawberries, whose protagonist is a lonely and aged professor who has lived for forty or more years with his housekeeper. They speak to each other in the third person. Near the end, he asks her whether maybe they could start calling each other 'du' -- to which she replies 'Professor! We're not married!'.

This is all historical, though; I think it's nearly all du these days.

By: tikitu

tikitu — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:11:37 +0000

Sure, I know the theory. The problem is remembering it in the flood of realtime conversation: it just never occurs to me to use “U” (unless I think it out beforehand, like calling up a company or whatever). And now I realise that I’d sort of rather be using “U” with this particular guy, only going from informal back to formal feels really really strange. (It’s up to the respected one to decide when you can tutoyeren, right? So if your teacher doesn’t ask you to use “je”, and it’s an older gentleman with leather shoes, you probably shouldn’t “je” him unless you’re very sure of yourself, right?)

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:01:27 +0000

Let me help you a bit as a native speaker: the “U” form is very polite, and it is the form you use to people you do not know and might object to the informal “je” form (like if you are calling a company, or when speaking to a really old and old-fashioned person). However, as soon as you have a conversation a bit longer (or a second one), most people will tell you to use “je”, “zeg maar jij”. You could tell your students to do so as well.