Polite form still used in Euro languages?

Question

Do germans/swedes/norwegians/italians etc still use the formal sie/ni etc in everyday speech?

Answer 1

Yes they do.

In my language (Dutch) it would be rude not to use the formal speak when talking to strangers, elderly people or people who hold a higher position in society. Using the polite form is also a good way to keep people at distance in a conversation ;-)

The same thing goes for French, German, Spanish and to a lesser extent Finnish (and probably for a lot of other European languages which I don't speak).

I hope it stays like that for a long time. I like having a choice in how I address people.

Answer 2

It very much depends on the language. I know for a fact that many German-speaking countries still use the "Sie" or polite you form when addressing one another. As for Swedish, I believe they have a polite form for you but it has slowly become more and more old-fashioned lately. The "usted" (polite) form in Spanish depends on where you are and which Spanish-speaking country you visit. Hope that helps.

Answer 3

Yes, they do. At least in Germany they do, so I assume they do in those other regions. In Germany it is still the custom to say 'sie' formally, and 'du' for those more familiar. It is actually considered quite rude to ignore this rule. If it's known that German is not your first language, you'll be excused for making the mistake, however. The polite thing to say if you realize you have made this mistake would be: 'Entschuldigung, ich habe 'du' gesagt.'

Answer 4

As far as I know, English is the only language descended from Indo-European that has no "polite" forms as such. While its thee/thou forms are still in use in a very few communities where traditional dialect is spoken, those forms didn't really attain the "familiar form" status that their corresponding forms in other languages did (e.g. German dich/du vs. Ihnen/Sie, French te/tu vs. vous/vous).

The point at which person A, who has been addressing person B with the polite form, begins to address him/her with the familiar form, can vary from language to language and even culture to culture. A few years after I taped a broadcast of the movie "Xanadu", I also taped a French-dubbed version of it, and I noticed of course that in the French version Sonny and Kira address each other with the "vous" form but then later with the "tu" form. I would imagine, though, that if you got multiple people to do the translation of the script, the vous/tu transition point would vary from one translated version to the next.

In German, though, that transition point *generally* seems not to take all that long to get to, but it might depend on several factors, apparently chief of which would be the relative ages of the people conversing and the degree of tolerance for new ways of thinking. In the movie "The Bourne Identity", when Maria and Bourne briefly speak German, he uses the "du" form ("Ich denke nicht, daß du bescheuert bist") even though this is their second meeting. On the other hand, in "Lola rennt" (better known in English as "Run Lola Run"), Lola encounters an elderly woman and uses the "Sie" form ("Haben Sie die Uhrzeit?"), and I would imagine that if they were to become friends, the Sie/du transition would take longer to reach between them.

Answer 5

I wouldn't know. I imagine any form of gentility is still de rigeur among societies which are both enlightened and civilized. Not all Europe is Europe. I've been there. Like the old saying; " Italy is not Rome and France is not Gaul. " No place is Utopic, however some are vastly better than others.

Answer 6

Of course, and so do the people who speak romance languages, such as spanish, french, italian, portuguese, etc.

Answer 7

I spend half my day speaking Croatian and we have two forms also.We have vi and ti.Vi is the polite form, and I use it whenever speaking to new people or older people.

Answer 8

Yes, they are very formal languages.

Answer 9

of course

Answer 10

Yeah they do.