It will always be you, only you
Rita Pavone accompanies an extended Sunday musical excursion: #20
We’ll catch up later with Italian singer of the 60s Rita Pavone, who had this one-hit wonder in Britain in 1967 (and, it must be said, is still going strong—she appeared at Sanremo Music Festival in 2020).
“You may call me ‘you’.”
The Germans have a sense of humour, when it comes to language (viz. my earlier article this week: Germans are up in arms). Or , maybe, when I read that article again, they don’t, though I do agree with them being up in arms.
Tu e voi
The Italian language rejoices in three words that all mean you: there is voi, which means two or more of you, and there is tu, which refers to close friends and acquaintances. And that leaves the people you’ve never met before, and they are referred to as lei.
Toi et vous
In French, things are a little easier, with just two choices, because the words voi and lei in Italian are reflected in French by just one word: vous. So, whereas lei is only singular and voi is only plural, French vous can be either singular or plural. Friends (the familiar form) are called tu, as in Italian (toi is the so-called emphatic form).
Jij en u
In Dutch, the relevant words are jij (pronounced yay) in the singular familiar (shortened to je on occasion, just as you know can be spoken as y’know) and jullie (yullie—like pulley but with the u as in hurry) in the plural familiar. The formal word is u (a shortened, more deeply pronounced version of oo), which is both singular and plural. What is interesting about Dutch is that there is a far less stringent distinction between the familiar and formal forms of you: pretty much everyone gets called jij these days. Young people will be taken aback if you address them as u; the king, on the other hand, is called jij only by his closest family. It is not unusual to find foreign-language films subtitled at the cinema or on television with the translator for Dutch having chosen the jij form (informal) and the translator for French choosing the vous form (formal). Strange as it may sound, both are the natural translations of the situation depicted in the relevant scene.
Sie und sie, du und ihr
The German language also has three words for you: the formal version is Sie (which can be singular or plural, as the occasion demands, and is always written with a capital letter, also in its inflected forms like Ihnen (to you) or Ihres (of your), even if it does not figure at the start of a sentence.
This has to be contrasted with sie, lower case, which is the German word for she, which also doubles as the word for they, even though the two conjugate differently: sie ist means she is; sie sind means they are; and, as mentioned, Sie sind means you are. When learning this in school, I wondered that there would not be rampant confusion given this triple use of the word S/sie, but there is never confusion. It just shows how we wouldn’t need so many words to avoid ambiguity if, like German, English relied on cases and endings, instead of endless prepositions. That said, German expressions such as darüber hinaus have their own charms, meaning literally there-over-hither-out, or more simply in addition.
For informal relationships, German has a singular and a plural version. The singular is du (similar in etymology to Italian and French tu, from Latin); the plural version is ihr, and its conjugation regularly poses a difficulty for foreign-speakers who learn German outside the country, because it applies only when speaking directly to a group of friends, and that is something that people learning a language at home, not in a German-language country, very rarely do, so it takes that little bit of extra effort to learn it: ihr seid means you are. There was once a convention that, when writing the ihr and du pronouns, they would be capitalised, like Sie is, but that is rarely done these days. Even the Germans, who can have a reputation for formality (not always deserved, I must say) have relaxed their spelling rules in modern times.
The du moment
When a German-language fiction writer describes the development of a relationship, there will invariably come what I have always myself coined as the “du” moment. The moment in which a relationship changes from being formal to informal. When individuals arrive at such a moment, in group situations at least, they will feel for clues given by other members of the group, whereas a pop singer at a concert with 10,000 attendees will immediately call everyone ihr in order to be welcoming. But whether a speech given by a politician is couched in terms of Sie or ihr will in some measure depend on whether they are addressing people from outside politics, or members of their own political party.
Subtitling films for television is a translation process that goes very fast, I can assure you. Therefore, one needs some understanding when they make typos—classic is the reversed numbers in German and Dutch, so that 58—fifty-eight—gets translated as 85—fünfundachtzig or vijfentachtig. That aside, the translators themselves have to judge when the “du” moment comes and in, say, an American film, they have to feel for that on their own.
The Germans even have a word for the act of prompting the switch from formal to informal: calling someone by the word Sie has a verb all of its own—siezen (which, as a verb, perhaps confusingly takes a lower case s). The contrasting verb for the informal form is duzen. While the dictionaries offer translations such as to address someone formally or to be on first-name terms with, one can jocularly translate both sollten wir uns duzen and sollten wir uns siezen as do you mind if I call you you? All of which brings me to my point today.
Will informality roll back?
In that article I referred to, which is about shop signs, I referred to the fact that the influence of English was starting to be resented in Germany (at least as far as shop signs are concerned). I think that that may actually be more prevalent than simply in linguistic terms, however. The spread of the far right as a political wave across Europe is bound to be reflected in culture, and nothing is quite so cultural as language is.
Many of the English words that we encounter in French, like le babysitter, le parking, and even la redingote (for riding coat, subsequently re-imported into the English language in the French spelling) stem from periods in history in which the French were receptive to English’s influence, when it was fashionable to be anglophile (the post-World War II period, or the period aound 1820, after the defeat of Napoleon). Such sentiments are encountered less in modern Europe: intercultural bonhomie is on the wane generally. To be honest, Europeans are bracing themselves for the possibility of a stint of hardnosed fascism, colour it how you will. The British withdrawal from the European Union has only exacerbated things.
One problem that the English language has not posed since the demise of our distinction between thou and ye from the times of William Shakespeare is the application of you in all senses: formal, informal, plural and singular (although I likewise—as with thou and ye becoming you—predict a trend towards a single spelling for your and you’re, and even for they’re, there and their, one which may yet have us yearning for halcyon days of … yore). In all events, what I’m about to point out is perhaps less apparent to English speakers than it might be to speakers of Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch or German and I would be intrigued to see, as the years unfold, whether what I posit here proves to be right: that there will be a growing tendency in future years to use the informal forms of you far less, and to increasingly use the formal forms.
The German word Sie is referred to by linguists as a mark of respect, towards the speaker’s betters and superiors. But Sie was not devised as a mark of respect; it was devised as a mark of subjugation. It was the higher classes who insisted on their workers and servants referring to them by this other word than du or Ihr. Aristocrats never talked to their servants as Sie. Never in a million years. Du was the somewhat demeaning manner for a duke to talk to his minions. Before Sie was generally adopted, in the 17th century (when, on the model set down by Linnaeus, all things became ordered), the general formal word for you was in fact the word, already mentioned, which would come to be used for informal plural occasions (those which are difficult for foreigners to learn): Ihr. Sie, therefore, was an adaptation of the plural form sie with the express intention of using it demeaningly. Of course aristocrats used it among themselves (and still do), and in that case it clearly is a mark of mutual respect; but its original purpose was so that servants addressed aristocrats differently to how aristocrats addressed servants or each other. It’s a verbal counterpart to the Japanese bow.
And will rolling back informality become fashionable?
Once money establishes people several rungs up the social ladder, they stop going to raves and the cinema, but transmute into gala attendees and opera addicts. It has nothing whatsoever to do with penchants for the art form or the hospitality: it is all to do with appearance and the social mix. There are galas where people act as if they were at raves; and the opera … well very few follow with the libretto in the modern age. If cultural habits change so radically and if the wealth gap is yawning so widely, I think it will only be a matter of time before the relaxed sollten wir uns duzen days get consigned to the past, and I can almost imagine English reintroducing its thou, its thee and its ye.
I wouldn’t even wonder but that fashionable influencers might even start rebaptising themselves as such pronouns.
You Only You
Written by Lina Wertmüller, Luis Enriquez and Norman Newell
Performed by Rita Pavone, with Geoff Love and his Orchestra
Released as a one-off single in the UK by this Swiss-Italian singer (she is one of only eight Italians ever to have chart success in the UK).
Thanks, Graham. delightful.