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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
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Petah, explain the joke.
It appears to be the question of using a language's formal or informal way of addressing the second person.
Formal forms are generally used for those senior in age, rank, social standing etc - whereas the informal is used for colleagues, friends, family etc.
The question revolves around whether to use the formal conjugations based on the elder nature of the date, or the informal verb endings based on the more intimate nature of being a date.
In short, not a joke, but a headspinning social minefield for non-native speakers.
At least I think that's the jist of it, always happy for a correction.
It gets even weirder. Depending on where you are the forms can flip. Like you might use usted for your family instead of tu. Also there is vos which is used in some countries like here in colombia.
Awesome, thank you. I know very little about Spanish (some may argue I know very little French too!) but I believe the general formal/informal rules are the same across most Latin languages.
Some of the quirks are cool though, like using the informal when praying to a God because apparently God knows everyone very well 🤔
Iirc from children's Bible school, Jesus set the mode by praying to Daddy. And since we're all God's children (not like Jesus but still) we start with "Our Father" and go on to "thy" which was the Medieval informal you
I mean, just use vosotros and be chaotic evil
TIL how to embed an image on Lemmy. That is why I have 2 deleted comments.
Spanish has two terms for the word you: tu and usted. Tu is considered less formal, and usted is considered more formal. The specific Hispanic subculture dictates when and in which relationships to use one or the other. But in general, we use usted when speaking to older people to show respect. However, it establishes a sort of barrier or detachment between the two individuals because of the formality. Tu is more personable/casual and implies that the individuals are more socially close. If you want to clearly establish that you are having a respectful formal relationship with someone, use usted. If you want to clearly establish a casual social bond with someone, use tu. The post is then pointing out the dilemma of whether to show respect for their age by using usted or establish a romantic and intimate connection using tu.
Imagine if in English, we used thou to show respect and you to imply a laid back relationship. You'd probably use thou with grandparents, bosses, strangers in formal gatherings, etc., while using you with friends, siblings, romantic partners, etc. The dilemma would then be whether to use thou because she's an older lady or you because you want to not have any barriers preventing intimacy.
If I remember correctly, the English ‘thou’ used to be the informal/singular as opposed to formal ‘you’. Also that a lot of Indo-European languages informal pronoun starts with t- because of the same root word: ‘thou’, ‘tu’, the Russian version (I don’t have a Cyrillic keyboard on my phone but it sounds a little like ‘tuh-ee’.
I’m sure a linguist on here can correct me on this if necessary!
There are two types of "you" in Spanish. Usted is for formal situations and people older than you. Tu is informal and people younger than you. The joke is that OOP doesn't know which "you" to use because dating is an informal situation but she's older than him.
3 types. Vos is used in latin america.
Not necessarily everywhere though. In my region of Mexico nobody says "vos".
Misread this as petaQ and I'm living for the image of a Klingon swearing at somebody because they don't understand a "human" joke 😂