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jelennuie
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Post Help me "get the word out!"
on: April 13, 2005 01:20
Please believe me that I'm not a professional nit-picker but there is something that is driving me nuts and maybe you all can suggest a way to "get the word out!" There is some really good stuff available on learning Sindarin and if I may say so, I'm doing OK. At least, I'm doing well enough that when I do finally get to Rivendell, I'll be able to carry on a conversation. But to the point, what I keep running into are lessons that are otherwise fine but have in common in saying that “thou” is the “reverential” while “you" is the familiar. Tain’t so! Thou is the 2nd person familial which is like "du" in German or “tu” in French for those of you who know those languages.

Also, for those of a religious bent (a way of being that the Rings and certainly Tolkien himself encourage), thou as the friendly or familiar is why the Quakers used it to show that everyone is equal and as well it shows the familiar (of the family) relationship we are invited to take part in as we use "thou/thy" in the Lord’s prayer.

But religion and the religious aside, how do we get the word out on just plain correct English? Learning another languages is always a terrific way to learn one’s own so how do we make sure we get it right?

Jelennuie


[Edited on 13/4/2005 by jelennuie]
Fíriel
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Post RE: Help me "get the word out!"
on: April 14, 2005 01:06
But to the point, what I keep running into are lessons that are otherwise fine but have in common in saying that “thou” is the “reverential” while “you" is the familiar. Tain’t so! Thou is the 2nd person familial which is like "du" in German or “tu” in French for those of you who know those languages

. . .

But religion and the religious aside, how do we get the word out on just plain correct English? Learning another languages is always a terrific way to learn one’s own so how do we make sure we get it right?


Well, I like it when thou/thee was used to address one person, and ye/you more than one. I do agree that eventually thou evolved to be used like French tu as well (I have no familiarity with German). But languages evolve, and at this point, to many people today, thou/thee is reverential. I can't see how we could revert to an even more archaic usage.

(For those who are at a lost as to what the fuss is about, the use of thou/thee over the centuries is actually very interesting -- Wikipedia has a good summary on it.)
Ailinel
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Post RE: Help me "get the word out!"
on: April 14, 2005 08:02

[...] lessons that are otherwise fine but have in common in saying that “thou” is the “reverential” while “you" is the familiar. Tain’t so! Thou is the 2nd person familial which is like "du" in German or “tu” in French for those of you who know those languages.


jelennuie, many thanks for that post! I've been wondering many times, why "thou" is supposed to be "reverential" without differentiation. But since English is not my first language, I didn't dare to start this discussion.

Without doubt Tolkien used "thou" in in either meanings, cf. PME:42-44 ("On Translation"): "Only in a few places where it seemed specially important have I attempted to represent such distinctions in translation, though this cannot be done systematically. Thus thou and thee and thy have occasionally been used (as unusual and archaic in English) to represent a ceremonious use of the courteous form [...] On the other hand the sudden use of thou .thee in the dialogue of Faramir and Éowyn is meant to represent (there being no other means of doing this in English) a significant change from the courteous to the familiar."

Another example can be found in the "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth" (MR:323 and 328, note 19), where Finrod suddenly begins to address Andreth as "thou", as the discussion turns to very personal and private matters, and Andreth answers :"But say not thou to me, for so he once did!" ("He" is Aegnor, Finrod's brother, whom Andreth had loved.)

Tolkien also said: "Most of these points cannot be represented in English" (PME:43), and I think we can trust him.

jelennuie
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Post RE: Help me "get the word out!"
on: April 14, 2005 09:57
Thanks to both of you! And yes, "thou/thy/thee is always singular just as are both "du" and "tu" Good observation.

Also, the example of Faramir and Eowen is perfect for illustrating the switch to intimacy between this couple by using the thou and thee. Although I was born in the USA and have spoken English as my primary language most of my life, German is my first language and I think the loss of the familiar "thou" in English is indeed a loss that happily has not happened in other European languages. Maybe that why I'm so keen on this subject.

Thanks again.
Faramirs_first_kiss
Mearhwine Namsmið
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Post RE: Help me "get the word out!"
on: April 14, 2005 12:34
Now here's a nice factoid for you, the reason the familiar form dropped out of the English language: we English are too polite! We got to the point where we were even calling our family by the formal form and so thou just dropped out of use.
jelennuie
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Post RE: Help me "get the word out!"
on: April 14, 2005 12:38
Wow! Thanks for the factoid. I didn't know that. Good manners and good information are always appreciated.
SwissBoy
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Post RE: Help me "get the word out!"
on: April 14, 2005 01:08
Hello,
I am wondering if there are any cultural ways to use the Thou form in Sindarin. I ask this because I am quite farmiliar with German, (having lived in Switzerland for two years) and in German one uses "Du" only with those who are around 15 or younger, or also with family members and very close friends (except in the case of Switzerland where many the rules of the German language don't seem to apply many Swiss Dialects don't have a formal form and informal form). Anyway before I get off on a tangent, I am wondering if Sindarin has any of the same "cultural rules" within the language.

[Edited on 14/4/2005 by SwissBoy]
jelennuie
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Post RE: Help me "get the word out!"
on: April 14, 2005 02:09
This is a little off the topic but my one Grandfather was also Swiss but spoke Romansch, which is a now all but extinct dialect of German. For the rest of us, at home we spoke German native to the north.

As for your question, it's a good one and something I hadn't thought about. Since each of the languages I'm acquainted with have pretty well the same use of the familiar, which is the one you have described where thou/tu/du is used with children, friends and family, people familiar to the speaker, I simply assumed* that Sindarin would do the same. Since this use in English had already disappeared by the time Tolkien wrote the Rings and the Silmarillion yet he chose to include the differentiating form, my guess would be that he would use this as a paradigm. It would be quite a challenge, but one way to try and search this out would be to go through all his works and see if this is indeed the case. However, since so often our knowledge of Sindarin comes from both the songs and poetry combined with interpersonal conversations, it might be that it may be weighted towards the familiar. Still, wouldn’t this show that Tolkien did indeed consider the familiar as, well, familiar? Without far more research, at first glance it would seems so.

Does anyone know of examples where the familiar is commonly used otherwise?

*I know. I know. Never assume because it just make an ass out of “u” and me.
Uialdil_i_degilbor
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Post RE: Help me "get the word out!"
on: April 14, 2005 02:19
This is a little off the topic but my one Grandfather was also Swiss but spoke Romansch, which is a now all but extinct dialect of German.


Romansch is not a dialect of German. It is a Romance language (hence its name) related to Engadine, Friulian and Ladin. As a group, they are called the Rhaeto-Romanic dialects. Although the phonology of Romansch (a.k.a. Rumantsch) was very strongly influenced by German, the vocabulary and grammar are unmistakably Latin-based.
jelennuie
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Post RE: Help me "get the word out!"
on: April 14, 2005 02:43
Man, am I learning a lot here. I like that!

I really didn't know my Swiss grandfather that well since he died when I was quite young and all I remember about the language from Linguistics was the fact that it is falling out of use. (And to quote Sam at the passing of the Wood-elves, "I don't know why it makes me sad.") Since I'd never heard anyone mention a difficulty in communicating with the rest of the family, I guess I made a false connection. Thanks for telling me otherwise.
Ailinel
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Post RE: Help me "get the word out!"
on: April 14, 2005 07:17
Regarding the use of a formal and informal form, Tolkien wrote explicitly:
"All these languages, Mannish and Elvish, had, or originally had, no distinction between the singular and the plural of the second person pronouns; but they had a marked distinction between the familiar and the courteous.
§ 34 This distinction was fully maintained in all Elvish tongues, and also in the older and more elevated forms of the Common Speech, notably in the daily usage of Gondor [...] To their parents children used the courteous forms throughout their lives..." (WJ:43)

So, if the Sindarin second person pronouns were attested, we should probably know how to use them.
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