I find it surprising actually how much these seniority rules are well-defined in many cultures, but in Brazil there is strong variation - even in the same geography. For example, a colleague who is learning Brazilian Portuguese was under the impression that "você" and "tu" were the equivalent of "vous/tu" or "Sie/du". In reality, they are just different regional ways of saying the informal you. In Brazilian Portuguese is to call someone "o Senhor/a Senhora" based on their gender, with a singular third person declination. And in the countryside, it is common to hear people use "Doutor/Doutora" the same way they would use the normal formal language when addressing educated people or land-owners.
Another example many people outside Brazil find interesting: in my family we were taught to never use the formal towards anyone. The rationale is that everyone is equal and that using the formal language was disrespectful because it created an artificial distance between us and the other person. We were also taught never to use the formal language when praying for the same reason. However, other people are taught to use the formal language towards bosses and elders, also with a respect rationale, and some other folks in Brazil (even from big cities) actually require that their children address them with formal language. So now when in doubt I use the formal language with people that are much older than I am although that feels utterly unnatural to me, but I always make people comfortable to use the informal with me as I personally find this to be more respectful.
Just one more comment: in Brazil it is unfortunately the case that some offices have a standard treatment like "your excellency", etc, which are nominally meant to respect the office but in reality become a kind of test of compliance and obedience. I recall in particular one incident where an attorney presenting in front of the Supreme Court was severely reprimanded for not address justices with the proper term. Personally, I am not sure that required compliance with a style - by regulation or by societal expectations - is indeed "respect" if it is not matched with actions and posture that really reflect due consideration towards the other person.
> Another example many people outside Brazil find interesting: in my family we were taught to never use the formal towards anyone. The rationale is that everyone is equal and that using the formal language was disrespectful because it created an artificial distance between us and the other person. We were also taught never to use the formal language when praying for the same reason.
Interestingly this is why Quakers continued to address people as thou/thee long after everyone else abandoned the practice. Thou was originally the "informal" second person singular pronoun in English, "you" was plural. People used "thou" (the familiar form) in conversations with God. People used "you" as a singular pronoun to be polite. Eventually, "you" overtook thou.
But the Quakers believed that using "you" to show respect was anti-egalitarian and resisted the trend for a long time.
Nowadays because "thou" appears a lot in the King James Bible it tends to be associated with formal, archaic language, so if anything the connotation is the reverse.
Even today, this tends to be the case in European languages that distinguish familiar and polite pronouns (what linguists call the T-V distinction). God tends to be an exception to the usual T-V rules.
The reason for this is that in all these languages, thou started out as simply the singular and you as the plural, with no politeness dimension at all. Using the plural pronoun (or third person pronouns, etc) for politeness was a fad that only spread around Europe in the Middle Ages (give or take).
Religious formulae, however, are generally extremely resistant to language change. This is a very consistent finding across the world; some of our best evidence in historical linguistics comes from religious texts (such as the Rigveda, the Avesta, etc). Religion tends to be, not surprisingly, a highly conservative and ritualised domain.
Thus, prayers in European languages with the T-V distinction generally retain the use of T forms when addressing God. There are all sorts of lovely folk explanations for this, but the real reason is basically just because prayers predate the T-V system altogether.
> Early English translations of the Bible used the familiar singular form of the second person, which mirrors common usage trends in other languages. The familiar and singular form is used when speaking to God in French (in Protestantism both in past and present, in Catholicism since the post–Vatican II reforms), German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic and many others (all of which maintain the use of an "informal" singular form of the second person in modern speech). In addition, the translators of the King James Version of the Bible attempted to maintain the distinction found in Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek between singular and plural second-person pronouns and verb forms, so they used thou, thee, thy, and thine for singular, and ye, you, your, and yours for plural.
I won't claim this as the one true answer, but one potential reason is that it is encouraged by many religions, including Christian denominations, to have a personal relationship with God. To put it another way, it is exactly God's power which enables God to have a personal relationship with each of us while we, constrained by our own humanity, are only capable of maintaining familiarity with a relatively small number of people.
In English, some prayers came directly from the King James Bible. The singular second-person pronoun in those prayers corresponded with the informal second-person pronoun in the normal spoken or written English of that time. It would have been weird to change the "hallowed be thy name" written in the Bible to "hallowed be your name" when actually praying just to be more formal towards God. Being formal would also not reflect the teaching that Christians have been adopted as sons and daughters of God. I read that "thou" indicated familiarity and affection like between family members and friends and lovers, whereas "ye" indicated distance, and using "ye" towards someone that you'd normally call "thou" would indicate you had a problem with them. So calling God "ye" would require you to rephrase passages in the Bible and might connote that you don't think God has a friendly or familial sort of relationship with Christians, but is far removed from humans or even antagonistic towards them.
In his prayer Jesus did not address YHWH as Adonai (“Lord”) as is customary in Judaism, but as “Papa/Dad”, Abba in Aramaic, and taught his disciples this form of address.
Or the judge who sued his condominium demanding its employees call him "doutor" (Your Honor)...
As a Brazilian raised to not care about this stuff, I would say even rebelled a bit, it was weird to basically be required to do so once I reached adulthood. I remember getting in front of a sheriff and having to address him as "doutor". I remember talking to an intern in law firms and he corrected me when I addressed him by name saying, "No, it's DOUTOR Adriano".
Gee, let's not even mention the medical field... veterinarians and nutritionists want to be called "doutor"...
I moved from Brazil to Sweden and it is hard talking to medical doctors, it is so indoctrinated into us.
me: Hi Doctor... I have X problem, Doctor. Could you give me some treatment, Doctor?
Doctor: You can just call me Ana
me: Yes Doctor Ana
Even for professionals that don't have titles if they have authority over you, you need to use the title. VERY evident when talking to police officers always say "Senhor" (sir), police have the power to really screw with you without any reason so better to show respect. You never know when you run into a police officer who enjoys screwing people over.
The Germans are also pretty ridiculous around titles, in that not only can you have multiple titles, and each are mentioned, but you can also have several copies of each. So someone can be Herr Doktor Doktor Professor.
The senior title comes first -- Prof. Dr. Dr.
Honorary doctorates are "honoris causa", abbreviated h.c. If you get multiple of these, you write Dr. h.c. mult.
So you occasionally find Prof Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. X (would have been the correct way to address Umberto Eco, for instance).
After introductions, people generally name only the most senior title, if any.
My country has a fairly high % of PhD holders, but nowhere near enough jobs for them, so they end up getting regular jobs (e.g. I have a friend who got a PhD in laser physics, who now plays with AI models for license plate recognition).
These people usually leave the PhD off their CV, as some employers frown upon it, as they think the person will have higher expectations and be hard to work with.
Most people would think working on AI models for computer vision problems is a perfectly reasonable outcome for a STEM PhD, even if it's not a direct continuation of the thesis research.
Turning a physics PhD into any sort of modeling, statistical analysis or engineering work is pretty normal in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more physics PhDs working in finance than academia and government research labs.
> These people usually leave the PhD off their CV, as some employers frown upon it, as they think the person will have higher expectations and be hard to work with.
Most of them are hard to work with. As is with any people that climb on titles. They consider themselves special. That's why it is difficult for them to integrate in a team.
Are PhDs ever taken for social climbing? It's absolutely wild to me that somebody would go through that for status. Doesn't generally give you much of it and costs you a ton in opportunity cost and stress (at least based on the cases I know lol).
I feel like the American version of intra-family respect variations is “Father” vs “Dad”.
In my family growing up, my dad’s name was “Dad” from my POV. “Father” was a strange-to-me formality that only a couple of my friends’ families use. “Hey Dad, wanna grab lunch?” is technically using a title of respect, but feels way different than “Hello, Father. Would you like to make lunch plans?”
My kids call me Dad, unless we’re greeting each other like Jerry and Newman on Seinfeld to be funny, which is something always initiated by them: “Hello, Father.” “Hello, Daughter.” kid giggles
One time I heard my kid talking to his dad and calling him “Sir”. That felt utterly foreign to me. If I called my own dad “Sir”, he’d rightfully have assumed I was being a smartass. There’s never another situation where I’d address him that way.
It can't be a coincidence that my Mexican family we were also taught to not use the formal 'usted' as it's too distant and actually has the opposite effect of making others feel disrespected. It's intentionally used when talking badly about someone similar to 'well YOU {usually bad thing but the emphasis on the formal you makes this feel more impactful}'
Funnily enough, você itself was once more formal, having been a contraction of "vossa mercê."
I'm surprised to hear that your family did not use formal language even in prayer. May I ask what religion(s) you grew up practicing? Catholic prayers often use antiquated, formal language (like "vós"). I don't know enough about Candomblé, but at least Nagô Candomblé is pretty highly formalized in the sense that Yorùbá is the liturgical language.
The "Doutor/Doutora" thing bothers me. I see it all the time with my in-laws empregadas, who use it to refer to my father-in-law (who's an MD) and my mother-in-law (who isn't). It feels weirdly obsequious in that context, even though there's a very clear power and class hierarchy.
> The younger person also addresses the older person, usually with a title or another word that fits their relationship, but not their name. Only the older person addresses the younger one with their name. (There can be more nuance.)
I love this. I'm an old French guy and still can't quite accept when srangers in an email (or a machine, a system, a web form) adress me using my first name.
Being "on a first name basis" still has meaning for me -- or it would, if it had for anyone else, which clearly is absolutely not the case anymore.
Interesting, as a German (which also has a similar system), I am the complete opposite, I find it super irritating when people address me by my last name. And the worst part is having to figure out how to address others, especially people you've known for a while but aren't really close to, e.g. say long-time neighbors I rarely meet.
Luckily, in the IT industry, it's common to just use first names with everybody.
Yes. I find addressing people by surname uniquely stupid. Like are you calling the person or the historical clan? It perhaps made sense for medieval lords to address their underlings as if they were interchangeable, in our modern context that has largely done away with royalty, using surnames makes no sense.
It becomes even more interesting when traditionally cultures (like mine) don't use surnames, but modern IT systems stemming from the Anglo Saxon culture force people to arbitrarily assign one of their names as a surname or IT systems generally don't work.
I have a very common first name (Dave) and a very uncommon last name (Pifke, pronounced PIF-key). The majority of my close friends call me by my last name, since there are several other Daves and Davids in our friend group.
My brother's friends do likewise, since his first name is Mike and he runs with a bunch of other Mikes and Michaels.
There's a naming collision when my brother and I hang out together, but since we live in different states, the system usually works.
Similar here. My last name is pretty unusual, but my first name is common, so I generally go by my last name with friends and colleagues. Oddly, I've gotten so used to this that it feels a little bit more formal when someone addresses me by my first name.
To make matters even more complicated, when I do use my first name, I almost always use an abbreviation. The only people that use my full first name are my parents, sister, and (occasionally) my wife, and it's really off-putting to hear it otherwise.
I think American high school kids often refer to and address one another by surname. It was the case when at my son's high school, as I recall at my own, and I think at my wife's. It might have been the case at my father's, and perhaps my wife's parents--I'd have to look at the yearbooks.
My experience is this mostly between men and generally not as common as it used to be.
My dad is called by his surname by some of his high school pals and call some of them by surname when he's around them (but not in reference to them if he's talking to me). Thinking back to my high school days in the late 00's I can only remember athletes being called by their last name. Perhaps because of football or sports that you just have your last name on your jersey. It would be an interesting thing to understand more.
I could be regional too. I'm from the US in the midwest.
Nicknames include variations like Mikey, Mickey, Mikail, Big Michael, Little Michael, Gas Station Michael, Angry Michael, Tony (obligatory wrong name your group uses because there were already too many Michaels and this Michael liked his middle name)
a lot of the time its just a nickname. public schools in the US are huge and then when it comes to sports the athletes are visiting other schools. before i knew it id meet 12 new Jakes every year so everyone goes by nicknames or last name
theres an occasional phenomenon in the US, often referenced in sitcoms, where an individuals entire first and last name sticks as their "nickname"
In my high school (Massachusetts, USA), almost all the students went by their last names, or something related to their last names. Ashley Milford was Milf, Samantha St. Paul was Saint Paul, Ryan Leonard was Lenny, Kevin Doo was Kevin Doo, for example. I'm still my surname in my head.
I learned later that we had a reputation for being a jock school though, because we all had to play a sport each semester.
I did in that timeframe. To be clear, it's not "Mr Surname" but just plain "Surname". I have a lot of friends like that, "Boughter", "Mooney", etc. Not everyone, but particularly if the first name was a common one or they played sports.
I'm actually surprised you're not familiar with the practice. Think Scully from X-Files or Stifler from American Pie.
Not just Scully, but essentially everybody from every doctor or police procedural goes by their last name. The shows aren't called Meredith's Anatomy, Gregory, Adrian, or Theo.
I experienced this at an boy's prep high school in the late 90s. It really was alienating to have friends I'd known since kindergarten start to refer to me by my last name out of sheer conformity.
Nor I in the 2010's/2020's; I have to assume GP is either significantly older than us, or from a community with a strong cultural bubble that may be clouding their judgement.
Addressing each other by surname is something that occurs principally in the context of sports, but outside of that you'd just address someone by given name. That was the case as regards children addressing each other or teachers addressing students. Students addressing teachers, of course, would address them by Mr/Mrs/Ms. <surname>. There are some oddball cases where teachers insist their students address them by given name, though.
In my circle usually people would either go by their middle name or they'd very quickly earn themselves a nickname... although now that I think about it we did use lastnames for some guys. Whatever works, really. Nobody was a stickler about how they were addressed.
The fact that different cultures evolved such systems independently proves that the general idea does make sense. Case in point: you go to an American company, the CEO says "call me simply John, feel free to chat up whenever you feel like it, we're all family here" and then you go talk to him about sex life problems of your marriage and he just stares at you awkwardly. Having explicit layers of social "closeness" makes things much easier to manage. "We address each other using last names, therefore I won't tell him about sex life of my marriage".
This wasn't just "sex life", it was "sex life problems of your marriage". And yes, there's a good chance I'd go to family and close friends if I was having intimacy problems with my spouse (with the approval of my spouse, of course!), assuming I have a close personal relationship with those people.
It's weird to me so many people in America feel they can't talk to anyone but strangers on their internet or paid specialists about their sexual issues. Sex is generally a pretty normal part of life, especially between two married people, and yet everyone feels they can't talk about it at all. It's an unhealthy mindset IMO.
is it particularly american to avoid bothering others with my own problems of any kind?
i live in the pnw which is somewhat infamous for its "mind your own business" culture. we have a transplant friend from the midwest who seem less shameful in asking for what amounts to free labor and i wonder if its a regional cultural thing within the US.
if forced by auditors to bother others with my problems, intimacy issues would be near the end of the list.
if this is american, which cultures encourage bothering others with personal problems?
I'm mostly agreeing with anal_reactor, that for most people there are hierarchies of closeness one will probably have with other people. I'm not talking about chatting up intimacy issues with any random neighbor or business contact, I'm talking about close friends and relatives.
Once again, not just out of the blue calling up that cousin you haven't spoken to in a decade and start unloading on them about your emotional issues of the day, but people in your life that truly know the day to day you. And I'm also not saying we should all invite our friends over for some barbecue and then just start sharing every detail of our sex lives. But if we are having problems in the intimate parts of our lives, we should have some people who we can talk to about it. People who understand your deep values, people who understand your goals in life, people who really get you and love you.
I think more people should probably have more deep connections with others. Everyone sees it as "bother others with my problems" and then we wonder why we have such a mental health crisis in this country and have a loneliness epidemic. Almost as if these things are related...nah! Seriously, is there absolutely nobody in your life who you think wouldn't find it a bother to listen to whatever is emotionally unsettling you? That the only way for anyone to help you with a problem would be to pay them? This would seem incredibly distressing to me, to feel like I have no real close community at all.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have paid professionals for mental health resources as well. They absolutely have a place, and I think a lot of Americans don't utilize these services enough for a multitude of reasons. But in the same way you don't go to the ER for a minor cut you shouldn't have to rely on paid therapists for your day to day emotional issues.
As for asking about free labor, once again it really depends on the context of the request and the relationship I have with the person. Once again, hierarchies of relationships. I've absolutely asked friends and neighbors to help work on a project around the house, and I've absolutely been one of those people asked to help and been there. I wouldn't think anything of the ask, and I wouldn't think anything of someone saying no to me asking. It would definitely depend on the context though. A random stranger knocking on my door asking me to redo their whole home's plumbing? Probably not! A neighbor I've talked to a few times asking for a spare set of hands for a minute as they hang something outside? If I have a minute, sure thing, I'll be right there. A close friend needing a hand pulling some ethernet cable throughout their home or work on refinishing their billiard table or painting a room? I'll grab some beers and be there in an hour.
My home is the first house in the neighborhood, so I tend to get a number of people who have minor car trouble break down stop in front. I go out there with a tool bag and a sealed bottle of water ready to help every time I see someone out there. But oh no, what a nut, offering all that free labor to absolute strangers.
> bothering others with personal problems
Ultimately my point is people should have other people in their lives where talking about intimate details and issues in their lives shouldn't be seen as a bother, but as something they would want to help with. And that I think it's a symptom of our society being sick that so many people think helping others, even supposedly close friends and family, with their issues is being bothered.
Sometimes. Those who don't usually also enjoy hearing me in a much more relaxed tone, whereas those who do end up perceiving me through the lens of much more official language. I still fail to see what's so absurd about this.
Do you... literally talk to your boss the same way you talk to your best friend?
If you live in a Robert Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land-esque sex positive utopia where you're constantly going around talking about sex to everyone and getting positive reception, talk about it with your CEO as well, I guess?
I don't talk to my work relationship only CEO about anything sexual. That's just common sense, and is built into our social mores, no need for some hokey Mr. Blahblah unless he wants to be called that explicitly, and I'm fine with that.
>I find it super irritating when people address me by my last name.
Me too. There are still German companies where coworkers address others with Herr or Frau followed by their last name.
I find it also interesting how people that learn German understand the difference between the "you" in formal ("sie") and informal ("du") version, but often don't understand in which context du use them. In most cases you can use the informal "du" nowadays, especially when you are out with somebody for a beer.
After elementary school we had this interesting shift form addressing the other children with first name to addressing them with last name. We were circa 11 years old.
It's a generational thing. There has definitely been a change in recent years, especially the younger generation can no longer do much with the formal “Sie”, but of course they know it. I am 46 years old and have grown up with and been familiar with the “Du/Sie” dichotomy from the very beginning. It also has many advantages and offers clear relationships: There is no ambiguity as to which pronouns I use to address someone, older people and superiors always use “Sie”. With younger people/peers of the same age, you can quickly agree on a “Du”. These days, it's unclear to me who I can address as “Du”. I'm a friend of clarifying this before starting, but it's always a meta conversation, which can hinder the flow of conversation. Besides, it's a kind of badge of honor and a sign of trust when you're offered a “Du”. When I address anyone of our management team as “Du” these days, it irritates me - I'm not “best friends” with them, nor do I feel closer or more connected. For me, the distinction is/was never an expression of whether you are on an equal footing or not.
Interesting how you write "Du" and not "du". I'm French and I've been living in Germany for 20 years. I understand and use "du/Sie" more or less appropriately (we have the same dichotomy in French). What I still cannot wrap my head around after all this time is why/when some people use "du/Du", "dein/Dein", "dich/Dich" in writing (to be clear: not at the beginning of a sentence). I guess "Du" is somewhere inbetween "du" und "Sie" on the politeness scala but I never dared to ask. I'm only using lowercase "du". What would be a rule of thumb on how/when to use the uppercase "Du"?
"Du" and "du" are generally 100% equivalent. Regular casing-rules apply, e.g. in the beginning of a sentence it's "Du" but inside it's "du". "Kannst du mir helfen?". "Du kannst dir doch selbst helfen!"
Sometimes it's written "Du" even if in the middle of the sentence when addressing someone directly. It's technically incorrect, but it's used for emphasis and hence politeness, and that's probably where your feeling comes from.
The same can happen with other words that are getting capitalized for similar reasons, but when going strictly by the book it's grammatically incorrect. An example would be "das Große Ganze" where it should be "große" but it is capitalized to emphasize the connection/phrase.
>It's technically incorrect, but it's used for emphasis and hence politeness, and that's probably where your feeling comes from.
That's wrong, it's not technically incorrect. In fact before 2006 the only correct way to address someone personally in written form was to capitalize the Du / Sie / Ihr. Since then you are allowed to write it either way. I still use the capitalized form because I'm old and that's what I learned back in school.
> Since then you are allowed to write it either way
Okay, my interpretation is that it doesn't really make sense within the language rules, so they changed it but allowed to use the old style to make the transition easier. ;-)
> I still use the capitalized form because I'm old and that's what I learned back in school.
Impossible to keep up with all the Rechtschreibreformen anyways.
Thank you and nosebear for the clarification! Now I understand better why some of my colleagues (like my boss, older) use "Du" and some don't. I'll stick to not using it, there are enough grammatic pitfalls elsewhere in the German language (not that French is any easier for foreigners, I'm sure).
I love and hate German for this; it's a language whose formal pitfalls and vagaries seem almost designed to sort people into highly-refined strata of education.
It must be so cool to see all of them "from the top" (i.e. someone who has been natively-and-highly educated, immersed in the language for their whole life); but it's from the outside it's like a fancy club that you just can't seem to get into :)
It seems sort of like calling other people ma'am and sir in America. Everyone knows what those words mean, but younger people will almost never use them (except in specific American subcultures). Some people may be offended if you call them sir/ma'am.
The YouTube algorithm has seen fit to serve me a bunch of American police bodycam videos lately. I find it super bizarre that a policeman will address everyone as sir. Including some deranged crackhead, without pants, charging at him with a sword. Decidedly not a "sir".
In Denmark nobody adresses each other formally, unless you're royalty. Parliament also does it during debates, but that's pretty much it. It's weird when it happens, and it's usually some store clerk that does it out of a misguided attempt at politeness, but to me at least it has the opposite effect. I am not a Hr. (sir), I'm just some dickhead buying cigarettes at 1 AM.
I Denmark we at least pretend everyone is equal. The CEO of the company is just John. We eat lunch in the same break room at the same time.
The way US cops talk is a whole thing. It’s one of the most-distinctive job-related American English variants. Even more so than white-collar “business English” (“let’s take this offline and circle back to it, as per my prior email”)
Some of it’s weird posturing (I’d put the “sir” thing in that category) and a bunch of it’s a combination of actually-effective and folk-supposed-effective ways of speaking to dazzle jurors, plus probably some other motivations and influences thrown in (some Hollywood-military turns of phrase and vocabulary, certainly)
In Spanish the Police/Civil Guard (militarized police) does the same, they will address you like "Disculpe, caballero" - excuse me, (Gentle) Sir. They will address you very formaly, and you might shit bricks on the road in case you messed up something or have a faulty light.
US English doesn’t really have an informal version of “sir” for the situation you described. Closest would be “hey” or “yo” etc. but those aren’t even (pro)nouns.
Sounds like a duel with a knight, so "sir" feels appropriate.
More seriously, I think it's possible that "sir" can be used in a way that casts everyone as equals. Like, you can be in a crackhead's den and recognize that he is in important person in that environment.
I think it also highly depends on where you're from.
Traditionally in Bavaria you'd have used "Du/Ihr" in shops or on the streets colloquially even decades ago, and yet from time to time you'd ran into people (always from Northern Germany) who seemed very surprised you'd not use "Sie/Ihnen".
Of course I'm overgeneralizing and I think I've had like 2 jobs in my life (since the late 90s) where some people were called Herr/Frau X instead of the just the first name, be it IT or not.
As a born and raised English speaker and fluent Italian speaker, I still don't love the "tu / lei". It's very... binary as to what gets used. Sometimes that's easy, but the marginal cases can be difficult to figure out.
I think the tone and posture when addressing someone convey enough formality. Like if I met Barack Obama, I would be very formal and respectful in my bearing and language, but of course still use 'you'.
In the weird edge cases you can simply err on the side of politeness and use the formal version. Worst case scenario they'll simply tell you to drop it and use tu instead.
From what I understand, it used to be similar here in Sweden, but that change with the du reform in the 60s and 70s, when people started saying "du" to everyone, and "ni" became purely plural (unless you're speaking to royalty).
We also pretty much always use first name, at least everywhere I've been. Would feel weird to call people by their last name.
ever have people at work addressing people by only their first name initial in email?
someone ive never met in person and uses my first name on work calls referring to me as "b" in email. its like the wears-a-bowtie-to-work guy of email.
come across a few of these people and have never noticed a tell they were that type of person outside the text of their email
It's interesting. My closest friends use my last name, while everyone else uses my first name at work. Apparently it was a hangover from the custom at old British public schools that some old Indian schools retained into the 70s/80s.
I sort of like it.
Same here, but the reason is simple - there was a bunch of people with the same first name in my class (1st grade). So we all went by our last name. And, as those still are close friends of mine, after all these decades, they (and everyone else I know from that time) use my last name when addressing me. And other people sometimes pick it up and use it too..
I went to a British private school (which we also call "public schools" to annoy Americans) and it was certainly still hanging on there into the 80s.
My brother attended the same school where we briefly overlapped so I was by default "Minter" and when the distinction was needed I was "Minter Minor" and he would have been "Minter Major".
Like many things it doesn't make much sense in retrospect.
Edit: People do still often call me "Mister Minter" where I'd expect them to use my first name, but I think they just like the alliteration. It's not old schoolfriends doing it.
This is remarkable because from my outsider glimpse German culture puts an emphasis on formality and credentials. If someone has a signature like "Dr. Ing. Prof. Anselm Schultz" am sure not opening my email with "Hi Anselm".
It changed a lot in the last 25 years. But it can depend from place to place. One of my friends has a Master of Engineering and he was a bit surprised when somebody in Austria addressed him with "Oh, Herr Ingenieur!"
Austria is special. Using an academic title is customary, and job titles are still common. Many foreigners think Austria and Germany are similar in terms of culture, but there are notable differences between the two countries that can be traced back to their history. I have an Austrian mother and a German father, so I experienced both cultures.
I appreciate that too at my former university in Germany, it's kinda "very modern" and people always use their first names for everything, professors and students alike. But it gets complicated when emailing professors that are only losely related to the uni.
It's quite common, even the norm these days, to address people by their first names in professional settings, among colleagues.
The thing is that this is also becoming/has become the norm when you get correspondance from strangers when the standard etiquette is to use title + surname, as in all European countries, I suppose.
Now, I think when people address you by your surname only, either orally or in writing, it is irritating.
Well, I personally find title + surname the worst; it's obnoxious and elitist; my (first) name isn't "engineer". I can live with it, though. I just kinda hate people who demand it of others.
Personally I get annoyed only if a sales person addresses me by first name. There is no other setting where I would prefer a stranger to address me using my full name, unless we’re in some context where there are dozens or hundreds of strangers so one can not expect my name is unique.
My father's family is German and all of the males in the family only used their middle name for everything except legal and financial documents. For example, Carl Hans Schmidt (to pick a semi-made-up example) would introduce himself as Hans to everyone he met, and the family would refer to him as Hansi.
I always wondered if that was a German (or regional) tradition, or a fun family quirk.
(The males have all regrettably passed on but I asked my aunts once and they said they had no idea why or how that was a thing, that's just what they did.)
Yeah I have had bosses refer to me by my last name and it's effin irritating. I almost always prefer relaxed, casual attitudes more than frumpy traditionalist for no good reason situations. I understand rare formal occasions but I don't want to put on some mask of formality every day. I consider everyone equal, at least as far as value as a human being. Just treat me with respect, I'm fine with you using my first name.
Now that I know that every culture approaches this differently, it takes zero effort to not be annoyed when someone does something different than what I expect.
These things come and go across times and cultures. Even in the United States, which many people think of as highly informal, it was once common to refer to almost everyone outside the family formally. My grandmother talked to her next door neighbor everyday and they said "Hello, Mrs. G-" and "How are you, Mrs. S-". You also see this in 19th century American and English literature ("Mr. Darcy")
At least when I was growing up, it was still the norm in the South/Texas. My parents would have never referred to the elderly in our neighborhood by their first names.
I also great up in Texas (30yo now). I was raised to always say sir/ma'am but for most adults that I knew well, we were on a first name basis. Deacons at church were usually on a first name basis (my parents volunteered a lot so I knew them all really well) but the one noticeable exception was the pastor and anyone in a teaching role.
Teachers were always addressed by Mr/Mrs/Ms and this extended into Scouts as well. For anyone I don't know, I tend to just say "sir/ma'am" (employee at the grocery store for example) unless. If the person has a professional title that I know of, I will use the title (Dr. Martin, Professor Lake, etc).
My parents I suppose were very similar. Sir/Ma'am for most interactions, but I don't recall hearing a Mr/Mrs/Ms when they referenced other people in our lives.
Since I've moved to Europe a few years back, I'm trying to follow the local customs more, which at first glance seem very similar (Netherlands). Formal for strangers, informal for basically everyone else. I've tried using the formal with some older neighbours and they always tell me stop immediately!
> Deacons at church were usually on a first name basis (my parents volunteered a lot so I knew them all really well) but the one noticeable exception was the pastor and anyone in a teaching role.
That brings up an actually interesting exception. At my church, the pastors were the only adults we'd ever call by their first name, sort of. Our pastor, for example, was always Brother Mike, not Pastor <Last Name>.
AIUI a Catholic monk who is also an ordained priest is addressed as Father not Brother (certainly this is true of the Dominicans I've met).
I think this is also true for Orthodox monks.
I'm not sure if there's a Christian denomination that has pastors who aren't priests, and also has monks. So this sounds to me more like a situation where all fellow members of the church are addressed as Brother/Sister.
I also grew up in Texas and to this day I still tend to use sir/ma'am for most adults I don't know. Every now and then it seems to throw people off. People don't seem to expect to hear "Yes, sir" very often it seems.
In rural Georgia my father's wife, still 15+ years my senior, would always "yessir" and "no sir" me, just as she did with everyone else (ma'am for women, of course). And this was in the past 10 years. Even my half-siblings from rural Alabama do that generally, but not nearly so strictly with family like myself. Use of last names, though, is still reserved for non-family elders.
Conversely, in coastal California that kind of speech is actively (even aggressively) discouraged, such as in public schools, higher grades, especially. It's still appreciated in more traditional communities, though, such as black or immigrant Asian communities. Code switching isn't limited to certain minority groups; even affluent coastal white folks often end of code switching.
Giving respect based on seniority is one of the major reasons why autocracies thrive unchecked in some countries as younger people are unable to hold older folks accountable.
In its extreme shapes maybe, but just paying respect to the elders for having lived much longer and seen so much more, is something that should be normal in my opinion.
It used to be a lot more reasonable back in the day.
When the world didn't change as quickly, or didn't change at all, the elders truly knew everything the young ones knew, and so much more. They had truly seen everything and had plenty of experience with the problems young people were struggling with.
This very much isn't the case any more. I'm in my twenties (technically part of gen Z), but I already feel like I don't understand the Tiktok-using, trap-loving part of my generation. The 14-18 year olds probably have very different issues now than I did at that age, and that wasn't even so long ago. People from my parents' generation are out of the loop completely, their world still revolves around linear TV, college as a path for success in life etc.
Oh, I am also not asking my grandparents for concrete life or technical advice. I am just talking about respect of their age, what they experienced and lived through.
I really don't get why just the concept of deserving respect for having lived longer - why does that make you more deserving of respect, irrespective of how you lived?
But... why does living longer in and of itself command an extra degree of respect?
> And are usually more wise in life experience.
assertion ;)
> That doesn't mean I tolerate old farts shouting at my children for being young. Or excuse shitty behavior in general.
> But the default for me is paying respect for the elders.
> Offering them my seat in the train if there is no other, etc.
I offer old people my seat because they'll likely feel pain if they have to stand up for a while, they might fall down if the bus goes bump, etc. I won't be pained by standing up for 45 minutes so it doesn't really come at any cost to me.
i.e. I'm not giving up my seat because I respect old people for being old.
"That's not a reason, you're just repeating the question. "Having lived long" is a value neutral statement of fact. How do you derive value from that?"
It is a reason in itself.
I don't know if I manage to live 10 years more, not speaking of 50 years more.
Living long is a achievent on its own, not be brought down early by life. Because there is a lot that life has to offer to bring you down.
~99% of people manage that, it's like the worst possible indicator for the wisdom or quality of a person.
All while at the same time putting everybody who didn't get the chance yet below them. It feels very arbitrary - there are a lot of better indicators than age for that.
It's a tougher sell when the younger generation gets the short end of the stick.
In a way that would be a good barometer of how that society thinks it's doing and how promising the younger generation sees its future, as prepared by their elders.
It's all the more interesting in countries where the population pyramid if fully reversed, and elders have way more power than the younger working class.
seniority as in rank, and respect for elders as in filial piety in East Asia are two very different things. Autocracy relies on execution of arbitrary power, and the latter places a limit on it. It's why after the revolution in China, Confucianism is the first thing they tried to get rid of. I stayed in Beijing during the covid lockdowns and there was one group of people that could do what they wanted "dancing grannies", old people who meet up to dance in public parks because messing with them was seen as too offensive.
Autocracy is usually driven by the opposite, unrestricted mobilization of the youth. In particular true in the West today. Bukele is not exactly a pensioner, and if the US has displayed one thing in recent times it isn't respect for the age of their leaders to put it mildly.
Yes, but traditionalist power structures are still authoritarian. Insamuch as they oppose autocracies, it is by virtue of having got there first and not yielding power to the new tyrant[0]. The problem is not the age of the ruler, or the legitimacy of the power structure, but the resulting distribution of power.
Insamuch as Confucian filial piety can be a check on upstart autocrats, that's useful, but not sufficient. There's nothing stopping the Maoist autocracy from embracing Confucius[1]; Mao just didn't want to for ideological reasons. Autocrats are ultimately building a coalition of scam victims that are all locked in the same room with one another. They don't care who's in the room as long as they won't unify against the leader.
In the US, we have Trump, the oldest US President in history, with, to put it mildly, "autocratic ambitions". His coalition includes old people, who vote early and often, and want to impose the social order of the 1950s upon the country. Almost[2] nothing about them suggests that they're going to meaningfully check Trump's power anytime soon; if anything, they're the only[3] faction of the Trump coalition that's gotten anything out of the deal.
[0] If the autocrat wins, they will eventually just become the new traditionalist power structure. Every pirate wants to become an admiral.
[1] Mussolini recognized the Vatican as a sovereign state purely to get the Pope to shut up about him.
[2] Insert clip of some old guy vandalizing a Cybertruck here.
[3] No, I don't count pardoning Ross Ulbricht. The Libertarian Party sold their soul for a donut.
I never truly understood linguistic formality until I was teaching a class and one of the students addressed me as “Josh”. My full name is “Joshua” and students virtually always used to call me that, but that semester, the computer system put my name as “Josh” and it felt weirdly disrespectful when a student called me that even though I know none was intended.
It's interesting for me as I'm Serbian but grew up in Indonesia. In Serbian we very much have honorifics (I think honorifics is the wrong word, not sure what the correct one is) and rules like "Younger always addresses the older with vi instead of ti, and vama instead of tebi etc. unless you're relatives or are close", but it also applies generally for strangers, so even if you're the same age or even if you're older, it's more polite to use the formal forms.
In Indonesia nobody really cares too much, and I called my teachers everything from "Ibu X" (Ibu meaning ma'am/miss, but also mother) to their first names or a mixture like "Ibu FirstOrLastName". At best you'll get a "bapak/ibu" which is basically just sir/ma'am, but I've been called "kak" (lit. translated it's something like "little sister/brother", it's a very asian concept and a lot of cultures have the same, like oniichan).
I always struggle when I go back to Serbia, 'cause I wasn't really brought up with the importance of honorifics. It feels weird when I get a kid using honorifics with me, feels like I'm 60 (I'm in my 20s), and likewise people look at me like I just spat in their face if I don't use the honorifics sometimes.
I live in Montevideo, here people use "usted" (the formal "you" in Spanish) to show respect to older people. But there's no strict rule about when to switch from "tu" (informal you) to "usted". So you kind of guess based on how old someone looks.
The problem is, if you say "usted" to someone who doesn't see themselves as old, they might take offence. So, trying to be polite in Uruguay can backfire if your mental age calculation is off!
I spent almost 10 years trying to avoid calling my mother and father in law by their first names. In my home country's language there are words for "mother in law" and "father in law" you can use in a second person context, but English doesn't have any. My wife has the opposite problem. She's gotten stuck calling my parents "Mr. XYZ" and "Mrs. XYZ."
I've decided that in English, every way to address your inlaws is weird until you settle on something specifically with them. "Mom" and "Dad" or "John" and "Jane", both will be weird until you've used them for a while.
And if they don't like what you picked, you'll know pretty quick.
Mumble years ago I started using "Mom" and "Dad" as soon as we got married; my wife did the same with my folks — and my folks did the same with my grandparents.
I feel like tu vs vous is extra annoying in French when you're speaking to someone who's not a stranger. I have no desire to judge if you think you're too famous of eg a professor for me to say tu, your success doesn't create a hierarchy between us, and it's annoying if you think so. I much prefer English for that.
I try to get people to avoid my first name, mostly because they can't pronounce it. The only time I had a stranger pronounce it right was when we were meeting w/ the Republic of Ireland tech transfer office.
Handling people's name is I think the bane of our field, and leads to many of the awful choices like forcing fields with a first and last name for instance, or requesting people's gender to properly set the Mr and Mrs. As a dev I'm not happy about it, as a user I hate it, I'm not sure the majority of people are happy either with the current state of things.
Accepting that it's a machine sending the mail could simplify all of this quite a bit, provided people are fine by being addressed in an impersonal and inorganic way.
If you mean snail mail address, no it wouldn't. It's common to share these between people who have the same last (or sometimes first) names. Things get really fun when it's. both, e.g. a man marrying somebody who has the same first name as their sister. This actually happened in my (distant) family.
If you mean an email (or the part before the @), also no. People sometimes sign up from addresses like contact@example.com, and "dear contact" would be super confusing.
The "right thing to do" is to have a "what should we call you" field, which should be completely separate from any names collected for legal purposes, if any.
> If you mean an email (or the part before the @), also no. People sometimes sign up from addresses like contact@example.com, and "dear contact" would be super confusing.
I was going for the principle that we're not trying to mimic human emotions when it's a mail to remind you to accept the latest TOS.
So, no "Dear", no trying to come up with something socially acceptable, just plain "miki123211@hn.xx, please review our newest Terms and Services at https://....../...."
The "what should we call you" field sounds attractive, but would be ripe for abuse IMHO. Not on technical terms, but users would definitely play with it to have you send "Mrs DeepshitFuckHorse please confirm your email at...." to random addresses for instance, or any other vector that we're not thinking about right now.
Earlier everything was based on 'handles' and using them was fine and expected.. As networks adopt everyone and become used for formal things it's gotten more complicated to integrate rules of different systems.
I've started to prefer messages that just start with "Hello,".
It's not unusual for people to use the name they know you by. In high school, there was someone who addressed me as Ix, the name I used in multiplayer Duke Nukem. He didn't know my name.
There are several people I know primarily through wechat, where it's almost always unnecessary to address people by name because messages have only one recipient. Sometimes this has led to conversations like this:
> What should I call you? 颖？
> OK.
[I was not especially reassured by that response.]
> re was someone who addressed me as Ix, the name I used in multiplayer Duke Nukem
Heh, there are still some people who call me by my nickname back from 2000s. It doesn't help what it means something between "the beast" and "the thing" and I had people of the old clout be quite offended by it. Including my mother.
Very interesting!
I work for (probably) the most well known German company. Here, it's always advised to use the first name & the 2nd person singular pronoun ("du"; you) instead of the more formal third person plural pronoun ("Sie"; you)
Company standards differ and every time you meet someone new, say in a Teams-Meeting, the older person generally offers you to use "Du". You may or may not accept it
It's basically "respecting your elders"
While I (21 years of age) talk with my boss on this personal level, I can't get myself to address other older (higher ranked) employees by their first name.
Saying Mr. or Mrs. is kinda required for me as the person I am, because I always try to respect them. (This doesn't apply to some other older (higher ranked) employees, those with which I don't have much to work with. While I do respect them, it's not the same type of respect I have for them)
This may sound very confusing and it even is for me, as I am not German and merely adapt to what is the cultural standard here.
My culture we address everyone by their first name. The only thing we must absolutely add are the social prefixes for older folks (typically above a 5 year range? depends on some factors.)
I could never address, mention or talk about uncle / aunt XYZ as just XYZ. It's very crucial to always add that, especially for people you know. If you don't know them, just say the preferred prefix as well, it shows a basic level of respect
We don't really use our surnames - it's more to identify, who exactly we are talking about. For example, when talking about "Michael", but the involved in the conversation don't know who we're talking about we usually just say "from the house of surname" (house of is the literal translation)
Spanish has actually three levels of formality when addressing someone by name:
<First name>: Informal, casual conversation.
Don <First name>: More formal, conveys respect while still indicating some closeness.
Señor <Last name>: Most formal, normally used in writing.
Using only someone's last name is just plain weird. If you want to speak formally to someone just address them as "usted", it will get you the same goodwill without sounding off.
I agree it's more likely to be used by older generations but it's not uncommon to hear it around either, especially when addressing or refering to elders
Well, corporation addressing clients would use señor/señora but between older/middle aged men. For anyone under 40 it looks a bit old-fashioned. They would just switch to an 'usted/ustedes' person (formal you/yall, for HN speakers) and no one will feel like they were in 1960.
And even with that, people under 35 will just stay at the informal (normal you) "tu" case.
The only situation where I call people by their last name in my language is when it's their nickname. Like there were two "Johns" so we call the second one "Smith".
In Spain maybe if you are something really important or being addressed on very formal environments. Maybe a boss/manager from a corporation addressing clients...
Typically machines/websites should use "vous", but it is more and more common to read "tu", depending on the target audience and the company marketing.
I'm Lithuanian but lived over 15 years (near half my lifetime) in UK and NZ.
I love the informality and my brain struggles a bit when I speak Lithuanian, esp when I know I should be using formal addressing, but I'm not sure I want to.
When I moved to the US it was a cultural shock to have people call me by my first name. But I got used to it quickly and now everything else seems awkward, especially since my last name is hard to pronounce.
In the USA as a low-level employee address the company CEO as "heya phil, hows it going?". Then address your friend with "Hello Mr. Smith". In most cases you won't get a positive reaction out of either one of those (yes exceptions exist).
How about this: address your husband/wife as "Mr/Mrs <lastname>", especially after a fight. Similarly when the kids have been doing something or you are frustrated with your partner say "your son did X".
Every language has explicit and implicit rules for expressing honor, respect, and closeness. Informal systems can vary more often and be more fluid but they always exist.
According to a popular quote, "Languages differ essentially in what they must convey, not in what they may convey."
You can convey relative social position in English, if you want to. You don't have to, if you don't want to.
Korean is different. You have to convey relative social position in basically every sentence because without that you can't finish your main verb.
In English, you can't offend a reasonable person by saying "I heard it's getting hotter today!" or "How big was the pizza?" In Korean, you can. Because there's no socially neutral version of "How big was the pizza" you can use to everyone.
* Well, you may think it's an absurdly cumbersome grammatical system, and in some situations it really is, but generally you get used to, just like English speakers are used to having to know and specify the gender of everyone around them, including cats and dogs, and it generally doesn't cause issues - but then sometimes it does!
> Korean is different. You have to convey relative social position in basically every sentence because without that you can't finish your main verb.
Sure, by the currently recorded official rules of the grammar.
If young Koreans just stop doing it then it will disappear within a decade or two - something only crusty old people bother with. Not that I have any say in such things.
I find the process fascinating though. I like to imagine what English was like when grammatical cases were being dropped from the language. Who decided to drop them and why? Kids being funny? People from different regions having difficulty understanding accents or vowel changes? What would someone at age 50, having used cases their entire life, think about everyone from London or everyone under 20 (or whatever cohort popularized it) when they just said all the words "wrong"? And when chided for speaking incorrectly just shrugged their shoulders and continued doing it?
On the other hand despite everyone agreeing that English spelling royally sucks... no one cares to make major changes to it. Even when writing informally in text messages or whatever. We all just keep going along with the system.
I also wonder how much computers are affecting us. Auto-correction may end up killing some forms of change to language over time. If GUIs and better input methods hadn't been invented so quickly would latin-based languages drop diacritics or consolidate some letter forms? Would languages like Japanese or Chinese have adopted Korean-like writing systems for convenience? Who knows. English dropped some letters because printing press letter sets came from Europe and didn't have those oddball letters. Who knows what technology might have triggered or prevented.
> just like English speakers are used to having to know and specify the gender of everyone around them, including cats and dogs
Welp, you have no idea. In German and in Slavic languages you'd have to know and specify the gender of every single noun. Is a coat the same gender as a beer, or different? Is orange the same gender as capitalism? Every. Single. Noun.
A few years back I had a long back and forth (and productive) email exchange with an older engineer (in his 50s, like I was at the time) on a matter of a particular old computer. He lives in a former soviet state. At some point he mentioned job prospects in his country are limited and was willing to relocate. He had excellent English and as a fellow nerd who loves getting into the low level details, I thought he might be a fit at my large & successful US-based company that has offices all over the world. I said I'd be happy to forward his resume to my employer.
A few weeks later HR contacted me: Uh, that was really painfully awkward. The HR person had called to phone screen him and called him "Vlad" or whatever in greeting. The prospective employee went on a rant and said he had never been so disrespected, and it made a terrible impression of how unprofessional my company was by being so cavalier by using his first name.
Needless to say that was the end of the interview process, and I never heard from the guy again. Even if he was a technical fit, the cultural fit was off the charts wrong.
> The HR person had called to phone screen him and called him "Vlad" or whatever in greeting.
Is that measurably worse than the current new normal? Call him Mr. Vladsky, tell him he's a great fit and schedule an interview, then block his number and email and never contact him again.
It's normal - at least for the big US companies, even with a large presence the culture is highly American. I remember when a VP of APAC sent a org email expressing strong feelings about the Black Lives Matter protests, and it was quite awkward since that wasn't really an issue discussed outside the US - he couldn't even understand how it couldn't be an issue for everyone.
Getting to hit the culture filter very early in interviews is probably a better outcome than ending up at the company and feeling awkward, not sure how intentional that is though.
I could be off-base here because I've been in tech too long but my understanding was that addressing people formally as Mr/Mrs/Ms has been outmoded in business virtually everywhere except in legal matters and (sometimes) when you work for a company and are speaking directly to one of your customers.
Everywhere I've been and observed, it's always been, "Good Morning, <firstname>" or similar regardless of who is talking to who on the org chart. (This doesn't mean you should talk like a surfer dude, of course.)
There are other languages that make this distinction. French. German. Just as other examples.
But as soon as you're past the interview, with your regular colleagues you're not gonna be on a "vous" or "Sie" basis. Maybe with your boss' boss or something, sure. Well maybe also with your boss if he's a dang stickler.
I am not sure about that. I am a low level employee and I address the CEO and the occasional board member I meet on a first name basis.
I grew up in Texas with its culture of sir and ma’am. After leaving the military, I make it a point to address everyone on a first name basis. Doctor Dan. Father Frank. Nurse Nancy.
On the other hand, old habits are hard to shake. When someone is extra nice to me, I often address them as sir and ma’am even when I am much older than they are. I also get irritated when a young salesman addresses me by my first name and attempts to upsell me.
I put "exceptions exist" in my original post because I knew the pedants would jump on me with their individual anecdotes :)
The trouble with informal systems (which is how I personally classify English) is that practices and expectations vary a lot across every context you can imagine. It can vary between regions. Between demographic groups (eg age). On and on.
I suppose that isn't a surprise. Language is always evolving. Perhaps we are still in a transition phase (in US English) and haven't really settled on a new set of rules yet. See what some other replies have noted about using formal addresses vs first names in business scenarios.
FWIW this is hardly the first time. At one point ge (pronounced yee) was the informal pronoun, you the formal one. Saying "you" to your mates or lover would be extremely rude, implying distance. But you might use it if you were mad at them. But then it became a fad (probably among the kids) to use the formal pronoun. That eventually led to the loss of the informal pronoun entirely. I like to imagine kids and teens running around addressing everyone as "your majesty" ironically - because you can't call them out for being polite and formal even if that polite formality was opposite in intention. Being a smartass is a time-honored tradition :)
I actually think "heya phil" is more the norm than not. Certainly in tech that's the case. For example, we address the CEO of the company I work at (small but public) by her first name. From tuning into investor calls from my days in finance it's even common at non-tech companies.
Can attest, I work at a fortune 500 and have addressed c-suite-2 by their first names, also seen the CEO adressed by his first name in Q&As by commom employees.
Your point is well-taken, but I've addressed two CEOs (that you might have heard) of by their first names, one named "Bill" and another one named "Steve". I still had a job for years after. But I was so low-level, they probably didn't even know who to fire.
Smaller companies, OTOH, have proven to be a bit hit-or-miss.
Gotta love when you're in a 2,000 person public company, and you can still "heya Phil" despite not being a personal friend at all, and he even prefers it
He’s made that joke a few times. It’s taking the respect implied in calling him Mr. O’Brien and turning the regular “you can just call me Conan” into something that is humorously asking the person for something more respectful.
This article does not address another layer that makes the Korean age system complicated: the "빠른" system. It refers to people born in January or February who, due to the school cutoff being in March, often enter school a year early and socially identify with those born in the previous calendar year.
For example, if I'm "빠른95", which indicates that I was born in 1995 between January and the end of February, I get to befriend and hang out with the ones born in 1994.
(Please note that Koreans typically make friends within the same narrow age band.)
As a native Korean speaker who has used this language for more than two good decades with Koreans, I'd count this as the primary reason why I love hanging out with English and Chinese speakers these days.
The language barrier between two Korean strangers (irony) is much thicker than when I talk to a passerby in English or Chinese asking for directions.
> Please note that Koreans typically make friends within the same narrow age band.
Everyone does to some degree or another. For example, Americans do this through middle school. It's not really until high school where you start mingling with other grades.
That's very interesting, thanks for mentioning it! I didn't know about that, hence I didn't include it. But it makes sense, I have sometimes noticed people asking whether the other was born early or late into the year, and change their standing based on that, but didn't know that that could have been because of the "빠른" system.
Being a 빠른 can put you in a slightly sticky situation, especially when combined with the strict hierarchy rules regarding honorifics (존댓말).
Typically, throughout middle school to university days, a South Korean individual is expected to use the honorific version of the language when speaking to someone older. This version involves a completely different set of vocabulary and grammar, used to show "respect to others" and sound "polite," effectively preventing one from being casual with others. Whereas a 빠른 is allowed to befriend people one year above their age and gets to use "반말" (the casual version of the language) with those peers.
A social complication can arise when two groups with a monotonic increase in age meet. Say, friend group A comprises a regular 95 and a 빠른 95. They became friends in high school and talk casually. Then there's group B, which consists of a regular 95 and a 빠른 96, who also became friends in high school. Now, when groups A and B start hanging out together at university, the 빠른 95 has to decide whether to use honorific or casual speech with the regular 95 and the 빠른 96.
The ones stuck in the middle, in this case the 빠른95, gets called "족보 브레이커", which roughly translates to "pedigree breaker".
Just so you know, the system has been adjusted a while ago so that new 빠른 no longer occur.
And it wouldn't matter anyway; the changes from the top are already having their effect, elementary school kids are starting to consistently use 만 나이 with each other.
this is a thing in the us as well—- tho the cutoff is august or september normally. there’s no name for it, but it’s real.
and american kids are also way more like to make friends in their school peer age group. i believe this is almost a universal truth for the first world
Absolutely true in elementary/middle school, and even a bit in the early parts of high school and college (upperclassmen don't want anything to do with "freshmen"), but in the adult world, I don't think age gaps of 5+ years between friends are uncommon at all.
Japanese also has a number of social systems and expectations that can be tricky to navigate as an outsider.
When I was younger and studying Japanese I used to play a popular Japanese MMORPG. It was popular among middle aged individuals (25-50).
I was lucky enough to meet a Japanese clan leader that invited me into one of the largest clans in the game. Fast forward a year or so-- and a new player joined the clan.
One day the new player flipped out on me in our clan chat. Our clan leaders told her I wasn't Japanese and to cut me some slack. She refused to believe I was a foreigner.
On the one hand I was proud. My Japanese was good enough for someone to think I wasn't a foreigner. On the other hand I was sad, I clearly did something wrong.
The clan leader spoke to me in a 1:1 fashion and tried to explain. It wasn't the language I used, but more or less how I interacted with the more senior clan members. I would often suggest things we could do or ask if they wanted to do something. In reality, it was expected to do small talk and wait for senior clan members to suggest something to do. I was crossing some social boundary...
> I would often suggest things we could do or ask if they wanted to do something. In reality, it was expected to do small talk and wait for senior clan members to suggest something to do. I was crossing some social boundary...
I know that this sort of shit happens in corporations and the government, but the idea that it crosses over into even multiplayer games makes me reconsider if I really want to ever visit Japan...
As an obvious foreigner, you are 100% exempt from all this. In fact, if you get it right, it'll make them feel weird and they'll try to avoid that.
I read a story once about someone who went to McDonalds in Japanese, and the clerk flipped the menu to the English side. The person flipped it back over, and the clerk flipped it to English again! They simply couldn't believe the foreigner could read it.
And I've read stories of people who didn't act like a "gaijin" (foreigner) and people didn't know how to interact with them, and the person finally just accepted it and acted like they expected a gaijin to act, and then everything was fine.
Seriously, just go. They were incredibly nice to us while we were there visiting.
> As an obvious foreigner, you are 100% exempt from all this. In fact, if you get it right, it'll make them feel weird and they'll try to avoid that.
Are you sure? In Korea, everyone who seriously cares about this stuff absolutely prefer it if you get all of it right. Of course, plenty of people (probably most under 30) secretly hate it and are therefore thankful if you don't get it right as it gives them a semi-out to be slightly more loose as well.
> I read a story once about someone who went to McDonalds in Japanese, and the clerk flipped the menu to the English side. The person flipped it back over, and the clerk flipped it to English again! They simply couldn't believe the foreigner could read it.
> And I've read stories of people who didn't act like a "gaijin" (foreigner) and people didn't know how to interact with them, and the person finally just accepted it and acted like they expected a gaijin to act, and then everything was fine.
Not trying to be rude but this pretty much tells me your first claim is likely wrong. Plenty of the exact same stories abound about Korea, especially online, yet they're both outdated and very cherry-picked. They're real, they happen (I've experienced them myself), but 99% of people would strongly prefer it if you were fluent in the language and followed every procedure as "normally" as possible.
They are, but they have in common that a huge portion of things written about them online in English - especially about these cultural subjects - are very outdated or otherwise unrepresentative. Like I said, most of that comment is written all the time about SK too, and they're effectively untrue. There would need to be strong evidence that such reports about Japan are any different.
This is exactly what I ran into-- it's something you learn by experience/living through it. Unfortunately, no amount of text books can really prepare you for that.
It's weird. I knew thousands of kanji. I could conjugate like the best of them. I could read and discuss classic Japanese literature. I could read and explain classic Japanese grammar and the root of modern grammar.
It's not surprising at all because I guess as one would expect, schoolyard rules applies in a game, not company rules. Seniority is still going strong at school, perhaps since the age difference is low or because there is lower opportunity for merit-based respect.
At companies, basically everyone should be speaking polite Japanese regardless of seniority. Harassment has been a big deal and companies have gotten a lot stricter on it these past years, so at large corporations there will be far less of senior members talking down to low members as did happen before. One reason companies can change like this is at most, HR is a much stronger org than product, i.e. the ideal career path for a manager tends to be to move from product to HR, at least at the ones we wouldn't refer to as "tech companies".
SMBs will still feel quite old though since they don't have strong HR like the big companies. I don't know much about government but do have the impression that they would also still have these issues. But I think corporate Japan has gotten a lot better than you might be thinking.
I co-run a guild in WoW right now on the anniversary server with >150 members.
It's people who play these games and almost any weirdness you can imagine that could exist in a person in real life gets brought into these games.
Often it's magnified because of the pseudo anonymity. We've only been "big" for a few months and a handful of things we've already ran into would make you not want to visit several western hemisphere countries if held to the same standard. :)
As a Brazilian kid I played WoW with an American guild. One day people were doing some trash talking and I threw the line "it is all Obama fault" thinking it was funny because I often heard that from TV due to all the political drama in the US at the time. The conversation wasn't about politics at all.
My guild leader pulled me aside and seriously said to not bring politics into it haha. My first big culture shock of my life.
In Brazil it is quite common (at the time at least) to just blame the government for everything, no matter who is in government.
The second was that apparently wearing speedos is not socially acceptable in most a lot of the first world beaches anymore.
Koreans have some "hacks" to get around this (age-based) social hierarchy:
1. Some workplaces use English names (and even English language) so co-workers can speak/refer to each other without using the social hierarchy constructs built into the Korean language.
2. Social (partnered) dance clubs go by nicknames for the same reason. Even though I dance with them on a regular basis, I don't know most of my dance friends' real names. I'm not aware of any other country where dancers do this.
> Some workplaces use English names (and even English language) so co-workers can speak/refer to each other without using the social hierarchy constructs built into the Korean language.
That's so interesting. It reminds me very vaguely of Indians escaping the caste hierarchy by converting to Islam or Buddhism. Sometimes the easiest way out of a restrictive system in your culture is just to switch cultural contexts entirely.
Kakao ended the English names a year or so ago due to inevitable confusion, but now people are supposed to add the "nim" (dear) suffix to each other's Korean names instead, which sounds creepy.
The funny part of the Kakao CEO asking to be called Brian is that there was a K-drama (Search WWW) with a fictional tech company, but they also made the CEO name Brian. I suspect if this idea had gone on every CEO would be called Brian.
Never heard someone saying 님 sounds creepy, it's very commonplace in tech companies, Kakao was far from the first to introduce this. I've worked at a place where everyone was ..님 and no one cared.
> 1. Some workplaces use English names (and even English language) so co-workers can speak/refer to each other without using the social hierarchy constructs built into the Korean language.
This is intended but didn't work as such, because wording only constitutes a small part of the whole social hierarchy.
This "high power distance" culture contributed to several airline crashes in the 80s and 90s because people under the captain wouldn't dare to question the captain's decisions.
Malcolm Campbell popularized this theory. It's not entirely without merit but as ever the reality is more nuanced. NTSB:
> The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the captain's failure to adequately brief and execute the non-precision approach and the first officer's and flight engineer's failure to effectively monitor and cross-check the captain's execution of the approach. Contributing to these failures were the captain's fatigue and Korean Air's inadequate flight crew training. Contributing to the accident was the Federal Aviation Administration's intentional inhibition of the minimum safe altitude warning system at Guam and the agency's failure to adequately manage the system.
This has been a pretty common reason for accidents all over the world. It's one of the most important reason CRM (Crew Resource Management) has been so instrumental at preventing accidents in aviation.
CRM is basically a system of cockpit communication and coordination techniques developed to prevent accidents caused by poor teamwork or hierarchical barriers between pilots - like requiring pilots to ask for input from co-pilots in difficult situations.
Assuming the "power distance" is pre-existing - I find honorifics make it much easier to challenge someone in authority. If you start with a Mr/Mrs Blah or Professor Blah and then present critcism.. it typically comes off better. B/c you are showing you're not too chummy and you're strongly implying you respect them (at least somewhat).
Ex: You're in a lecture and you tell your professor "Professor X, I think on slide 10 there is a mistake". This comes off much better than "Hey Bob, I think there is a mistake on slide 10"
So at least personally, if appropriate, I default to using honorifics b/c it makes people feel better. (Unless they for some reason want to be seen as your peer - which does happen rarely)
Yeah in my personal experience I like honorifics for the same reason. Not possible in English but in the other languages I know I make it a point to address everyone (except family and friends) with the higher honorific. Especially restaurant staff or other service workers. Sometimes I wish English had an easy way for me to convey "I respect you" as subtext.
>Sometimes I wish English had an easy way for me to convey "I respect you" as subtext.
I find that sir/ma'am plus politeness (please, thank you, etc.) works nicely.
While there is the chance that you might misgender someone with that, that's not very common (at least for me) as long as you, you know, pay attention.
That said unless they have a note tattooed on their forehead with their preferred term of address, I can only use non-language cues to determine the appropriate term.
On the rare occasions where I use the wrong term and am corrected, I am fastidious in adhering to the requested term(s).
None of that's is rocket surgery, just simple respect for other humans IMHO.
That sounds like pop science. I find it funny culture is used to describe why things fail in Asia, but when things fail in the West, it’s because of that individual person‘s actions.
Nathan Fielder's show "The Rehearsal" on HBO recently released season 2, the entire season is about airline cockpit dynamics between the first officer and the pilot.
As a young man many years ago I happened to be in Seoul, in a shoe store. I was casually asking prices in English and noticed the salesman or owner was getting visibly angry with me. So much so that as I went around the corner of the store I clearly saw that he had begun advancing toward me, with every intention of physically attacking me. I put my hand forward to stop him and as I did, I shouted loudly, again in English, "Stop. Let me outta here!" To which he suddenly hesitated, stepped aside and let me go.
I wondered for years what I might have done to upset the bloke - he was a well built man and I did not want to fight him! It was only after the KAL crash and the coverage it gave the Korean focus on seniority and age that the penny dropped. He thought I was Korean - I do look very Korean (and Japanese and Chinese) - and was clearly offended by my not respecting his age.
At least that is what I would like to think. The alternative is that I was somehow very offensive anyway and I'd like not to think that.
Interesting. In Germany I've always had the opposite issue of my superiors vastly preferring I used "du" for them instead of "sie". I've always had some trouble with that since in Russia you usually try to address senior employees, your teachers and professors formally, although tech companies are as usual a big exception.
Many people were quite unhappy when I kept slipping up and being too formal with them afterwards... :)
Umm... I'm not sure I follow. You were casually asking prices in English and the shopowner jumped to the conclusion that you were trolling him by using English when you were fluent in Korean?
If it was around that time, most Koreans were not good at English, and it's not exactly hard to tell a native English speaker from a Korean who learned "I'm a boy, you are a girl" in middle school.
Sounds like the shopowner was just a jerk and was mad for some random reason.
It was in the early '90s, sometime before South Korea broke out as a dominant economic force. Yes, I'm convinced he thought I was a western educated Korean brat prancing around in his shop and was having none of it. Looking back, I still feel a sense of relief I didn't get beaten up.
I did some work (military) with a couple asian nations during a multinational exercise. It was all done in english. What blew them away was how our honorifics changes not just according to the established hierarchies but according to location, dress and who else was within earshot. I had a junior guy from an asian nation shadowing me. He was shocked when my officer and I addressed each other by first names/callsigns. What stressed my shadow was how twenty minutes later, in a different room with different people, we switched to formal ranks. What further blew his mind was my explanation that breaks from these casual informalities would be a silent message. For instance, if a friend addressed me in private by my formal rank, I would know that I was in trouble ... or that someone was listening. He thought our culture was the more complicated. His culture had rules that everyone knew and followed. Our culture had rules that everyone knew but nobody seemed to follow.
I met a Korean classmate while studying Chinese together in China. We really hit it off, and on our first date she unexpectedly asked how old I was. When I told her I was a couple of years older, she gently explained that we couldn’t be together. Well.. I couldn’t understand it, feelings were mutual, it was like we were meant for each other, and all that was thrown because of age difference, how stupid.
It can also be considered rude to use the more formal style of speech when the social hierarchy dictates the informal style should be used.
The book Using Korean[1] gives a detailed explanation of how formal speech indicates social distance more than simple politeness:
> [존댓말] indicates a psychological distance between the speaker and the hearer... a couple in a romantic relationship who normally use an intimate casual style with each other will suddenly switch to a formal style after they fight, to demonstrate the distance they feel from each other.
That isn't about the social hierarchy, it's about the switch. If the couple would always use 존댓말 - which is not the norm nowadays but still a large enough minority that it's not weird - then obviously it'd be a switch to 반말 that would be shocking; in fact it would sound even worse to suddenly do so during a fight.
I suppose it would depend on the exact people and circumstances: the "social distance" can be very subjective.
- The same situation with different people or the same people in a different situation may result in different speech levels.
- If an older person feels really close to a junior, they may even ask them to "lower their speech."
There was a documentary about a much older Korean working for a very young boss. This resulted in a conflict: age hierarchy vs role hierarchy. They both spoke to each other in the formal style.
And think about addressing a mix of people who are both above and below you in the hierarchy...
Korean age is a hack that helps ease the friction that all those rules of seniority and different speech levels impose on us.
It gives you an age bracket within which everyone is equal, once and for all, regardless of their exact date of birth. Your friend isn't suddenly going to speak down to you when he turns 7 and you're still 6, except perhaps as a joke. Both of you are 8 in Korean age, and will turn 9 at the exact same moment. This age bracket produces a stable peer group who can remain friends for life, regardless of when or where individuals went to school, got a job, or enlisted in the army -- all the other places where hierarchy can be imposed.
Of course, the year is also important for reasons of superstition. There are still some elderly people who ask for the (Chinese zodiac) animal associated with your year of birth, instead of the year itself.
From the perspective of national and social development, this is definitely a dross culture. This system similar to hierarchy seemingly increases the courtesy among people. However, it more often leads to age bullying, blind obedience to the elders, and hinders resistance and innovation.
Influenced by Confucian culture, China doesn't have such a perverted etiquette system at all.
Every way has its pros and cons. Having an age related hierarchy might have benefits like societal coherence or stability. I am not a proponent of it, I just acknowledge my inability to fully grasp the impact and ramifications as to label one as superior and the other as "perverted".
In the modern day, Korean culture is absolutely cooked. There is a reason their birth rates are so terrible. Talking to Koreans and consuming even just a little bit of media about Korea makes some of the problems pretty obvious.
I will point you again to the usage of the word "perverted", which you missed twice.
Additionally the bias I pointed out is highly relevant to the discussion and therefore my argument is not an ad hominem. I can wait for you to calm down if you'd like, so your next reply is less emotionally charged. (that one was.)
I find it really interesting how much weight that simple question "What year were you born?" carries in Korean social life. A Korean friend once told me that it’s not about prying into your private life, it’s about figuring out how to talk to you and what to call you.
It also made me realize that a lot of the small social details we take for granted might seem really jarring or even rude in another culture.
I'm surprised they ask for the year directly. My impression is that in China, if you want to know someone's age, you ask for the animal of their birth year. That gives you the year mod 12, which you're expected to be able to resolve to a particular year yourself.
I've read that it's considered perfectly OK to ask someone's salary in China, so it's interesting that asking a person's birth year would be sensitive.
A friend (not Korean) said on his 29th birthday that he's starting his 30th year of life. It was an interesting perspective, because in general we celebrate our nth birthday after completing n years of life.
According to a traditional East Asian world view, your life is influenced by the powers that govern each unit of time -- hour, day, month, year -- that you pass through.
Under this system, the number of distinct powers that you were influenced by is more important than the exact number of days or years that you spent on this planet. Korean culture is still saturated with this stuff. You can DM a shaman your date of birth, and they'll use this kind of system to tell your fortunes.
> in general we celebrate our nth birthday after completing n years of life.
Well it's literally like you say: your friend will "celebrate his 30th birthday after completing 30 years of life". If the 30th birthday happens after 30 years of life, then the 30th year of life happens before the 30th birthday.
Starting from one is more accurate in a pedantic kind of way if you're counting how long you've been alive. Since the average human pregnancy is about 40 weeks.
Personally I prefer to round 29 years 6 months up to «I’m now 30 years old». As you would expect to happen if you run round(29.5). For some reason, most cultures settled on either floor(age) or ceil(age).
As the sibling comment mentioned, I was thinking of East Asian countries.
There's another difference in that age++ there happens on Chinese New Year and not your own birthday, but that's an orthogonal point to the rounding, I think.
It's a definition that could add 1 to everyone's birthday celebrations. A baby born on the 15th of June 2024 could be celebrating its 2nd birth day in a few days. Or well the family would. They'd celebrate the birth, and why not count that as a "birthday celebration".. Ha.
Curiously I guess most of us celebrate the number of years completed.
This pops a lot with annual celebrations. I attended a commencement for my niece several years ago, and a speaker referred to it as the 100th annual commencement while a brochure referred to it as the 100th anniversary. Pick one.
A not dissimilar age thing I've found interesting is from India: it is (or can be? Big country) typical to age yourself by the year of life you're in, i.e. 1-based rather than 0-based, basically.
On his birthday my grandfather in law said 'I am x years old! [...] Oh, no, x-1 complete.'
It's funny these kinds of arbitrary systems for things we have, and never question, until you suddenly stumble into one that's slightly different.
I've been told the one reason why Japanese is so hard to learn is because there is an underlying etiquette and social hierarchy built into the language and it is not simply being able to understand and speak the words.
Native speakers tolerate errors when it's obvious someone is non-native, but become offended when they speak it perfectly, but screw up the social heirarchy, so it's extremely hard to progress beyond a certain point.
Heh that’s overstated. As a non Asian foreigner*, you get a lot of leeway for making mistakes when speaking Japanese, as it is somehow ingrained in the subconscious here that Japanese is very special and very complicated and a foreigner trying to speak it is already doing something near impossible.
If your Japanese is near flawless except for the honorific register that would strike people as weird, but then what did you do to end up speaking flawless Japanese without ever properly internalizing honorific Japanese?
*(If you are an Asian foreigner, you are subject to many other layers of prejudice unrelated to your language ability)
My grandmother spent a lot of time in Japan, and she reported that everyone was very accommodating initially, but that over time the expectation developed that after being there for so long she should have learned the correct way to behave.
Yes, but that’s more about manners and being part of a community than language skills. You can speak shit Japanese and still be involved with your local community and be accepted and appreciated, for sure.
The fact that all Koreans that were born in the same year become of a legal age to drink on the same day, probably creates some cool memories if you drink responsibly
I despise the social construct that ties respect to age. As someone who’s biologically Japanese—and coming from a culture that shares similar values with Korean society in this regard—I often find it frustrating when dealing with other Japanese people.
Some individuals will ask your age just so they can justify talking down to you. I’ve even had cases where someone was polite at first, but the moment they realized they were older, their behavior shifted entirely. That kind of attitude is a major pet peeve of mine—it honestly makes me want to pull my hair out.
While the younger generation tends to care less about age differences among peers (and thankfully avoids this behavior), there are still far too many people who believe age alone gives them the right to act superior or pretend they know better.
I strongly believe respect should be earned based on character, not age. I make a point to be polite to everyone, regardless of how old they are—and that’s why I don’t even bother asking.
I'm a person of European descent married to a person of Korean descent. Her mother's age has always been a question mark. As she aged and her memory became less reliable, it became even moreso. Nevermind not being entirely certain of her actual birthday...
What a brilliant comment :) I'm not sure if you're joking, but it certainly brightened up my day.
That Gangnam Style song is about riding and the associated up and down motion, just not related to horses. In that scene where he's watching the horses, he's singing:
"A true lady who is warm and human during the day, who is classy and knows how to enjoy a cup of coffee. But when night comes, her heart gets hot..." and then you see the horse moving its head up and down and he sings: "A lady who is kinky in that way"
And then you see him with 2 girls in his arms and he's using rather suggestive language:
"A man who one-shots ... his coffee. A man who won't let things cool down ... A man who bursts when night comes ... his heart. A man with few muscles and he is bulging ... with ideas."
Also, if you pay attention to it, you can hear that both gangnam songs are littered with audio samples of him and her moaning, e.g:
And then there's the famous elevator scene where his lyrics are: "A good woman appears calm, but knows how to have fun. She's reasonable and when it's the right time, she will let her hair down ..."
I am realizing now, that with no research or even conscious thought, I had settled on the idea that the song was some goofy Korean dude making a statement about the absurdity of late-stage capitalist sexualized excess, perhaps metaphorically asking who really is the horse and who really is the rider. And how we're all simultaneously instigator, enabler, beneficiary, and victim of same.
I can go a few directions from here...
1. I'm completely wrong, because obviously. Never attribute to self-reflection what can equally be explained by misogyny.
2. I'm right! For which I present as evidence: the Mercedes taillights blinking in time to the beat, and the existence of the yellow guy. I'll accept credit for this theory even if the message was unintentional. :)
3. Neither/all of the above. The artist asks the question which the public misinterprets as the answer, etc.
I don't know what to believe, but please be gentle with me and understand that I was raised in a culture where Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, and Creedence Clearwater Revival are used as patriotic anthems at political rallies. Nothing is required to make sense.
Actually I just noticed that for the first time today! I was reading a Korean webtoon in French and the translator didn't translate "Oppa" but rather kept it in and explained it in a translator's note.
Is it more or less beneficial to birth a Korean child on December 31 so they can be two years in Korean Age ASAP? Thinking about their career prospects, certain legal requirements etc. if older is better, it seems like you’d want to hit that December 31st birth date.
This reminds me, it's actually very interesting how English movies get translated into Korean and vice versa, since the nuances mentioned in the article are hard to translate / convey in the other language.
In Tamatoa's musical number in Moana, he spontaneously breaks into French for a single line of his song, "c'est la vie, mon ami". This is not expected to cause problems for English-speaking audiences.
I thought it was interesting to see how foreign language dubs handled that line. Sometimes they translate the French into the dub language as if it had just been English like the rest of the song. Sometimes they leave it as French. I don't remember any that translate it into a language that isn't the language of the dub, but also isn't French.
(Of particular note, the French dub leaves the line as "untranslated" French.)
Something that feels similar to me is the treatment of the Italian brothers in Lady and the Tramp. In the English original, they are jovial immigrants from Italy who operate an Italian restaurant and speak English in a very thick Italian accent.
This cultural concept translated better into some foreign languages than others. In the French dub, the brothers are jovial immigrants from Italy who operate an Italian restaurant and speak French in a very thick Italian accent.
In the Spanish-dubbed version of Fawlty Towers, Manuel is Italian instead of Spanish, and he's Mexican in the Catalan version. (https://archive.ph/9LX6t)
People always tell me that watching English dubbed anime isn't good because it loses the nuance of the Japanese language, in similar ways, though I don't speak/read Japanese so I'm either going to be listening to it in English or reading the subs in English. I know I'm going to be losing subtle nuance either way but I've never been good at learning languages
“I don’t give out that information (as a matter of principle/because my mother told me not to/because people close to me have been victims of identity theft/because I’m old enough to know better).” Or some variation thereof. It’s enough to say that you don’t because you choose not to, but some people will belabor the point until you give an answer that has the ring of finality and can communicate that it isn't a matter of debate, but a matter of conscience, or rationale, or whatever principle(s) guide you.
Or you could provide a joke answer that is absurdly high or low or wrong, like saying that you weren’t born yesterday, or that you were born at night, but not last night, or in the day, but not yesterday. This might work for those who you are closer with personally, but some may find this kind of answer dismissive and will persist or get upset. If in doubt, use the principle-based approach I mentioned above instead or in addition to the joke one, as a way of showing that you’re answering in good faith and take their question seriously as asked.
It does not. Japan a hundred years ago maybe. Some of my Japanese colleagues were surprised when I mentioned this style of age counting in an old novel I was reading.
You're right and I think I got my misinformation from reading older novels too. Apparently, the law changed in 1902 and it broadly phased out in the 50s.
That used to be true about Japan using the "1 the day you're born" system, but now it's mostly only referenced to joke about kids trying to claim they're older than they really are.
In my hometown in China, same practice. However I find it not consistent for people from all over of China. When I get into a causal conversation about childhood with people from everywhere I had to do the conversion in my head (which school year what game came out e.g).
Those Korean kids born on December 31st must be the kings and queens of their peer group when they become eligible to buy alcohol two years ahead of the others!
Not really because everyone starts at one, so at most it's one year younger those born on Jan 1st.
Also their peer group usually being people born the same year, everyone gets to drink at the exact same time (unlike in other countries where everyone reach drinking age at their birthday).
Koreans from Korea often do not follow this rule outside of the country. They basically use it whenever it benefits them. So in essence this aspect of the culture is pretty much…BS.
I find it surprising actually how much these seniority rules are well-defined in many cultures, but in Brazil there is strong variation - even in the same geography. For example, a colleague who is learning Brazilian Portuguese was under the impression that "você" and "tu" were the equivalent of "vous/tu" or "Sie/du". In reality, they are just different regional ways of saying the informal you. In Brazilian Portuguese is to call someone "o Senhor/a Senhora" based on their gender, with a singular third person declination. And in the countryside, it is common to hear people use "Doutor/Doutora" the same way they would use the normal formal language when addressing educated people or land-owners.
Another example many people outside Brazil find interesting: in my family we were taught to never use the formal towards anyone. The rationale is that everyone is equal and that using the formal language was disrespectful because it created an artificial distance between us and the other person. We were also taught never to use the formal language when praying for the same reason. However, other people are taught to use the formal language towards bosses and elders, also with a respect rationale, and some other folks in Brazil (even from big cities) actually require that their children address them with formal language. So now when in doubt I use the formal language with people that are much older than I am although that feels utterly unnatural to me, but I always make people comfortable to use the informal with me as I personally find this to be more respectful.
Just one more comment: in Brazil it is unfortunately the case that some offices have a standard treatment like "your excellency", etc, which are nominally meant to respect the office but in reality become a kind of test of compliance and obedience. I recall in particular one incident where an attorney presenting in front of the Supreme Court was severely reprimanded for not address justices with the proper term. Personally, I am not sure that required compliance with a style - by regulation or by societal expectations - is indeed "respect" if it is not matched with actions and posture that really reflect due consideration towards the other person.
> Another example many people outside Brazil find interesting: in my family we were taught to never use the formal towards anyone. The rationale is that everyone is equal and that using the formal language was disrespectful because it created an artificial distance between us and the other person. We were also taught never to use the formal language when praying for the same reason.
Interestingly this is why Quakers continued to address people as thou/thee long after everyone else abandoned the practice. Thou was originally the "informal" second person singular pronoun in English, "you" was plural. People used "thou" (the familiar form) in conversations with God. People used "you" as a singular pronoun to be polite. Eventually, "you" overtook thou.
But the Quakers believed that using "you" to show respect was anti-egalitarian and resisted the trend for a long time.
Nowadays because "thou" appears a lot in the King James Bible it tends to be associated with formal, archaic language, so if anything the connotation is the reverse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
> People used "thou" (the familiar form) in conversations with God. People used "you" as a singular pronoun to be polite.
Why didn't people address God with "you"?
> Why didn't people address God with "you"?
Even today, this tends to be the case in European languages that distinguish familiar and polite pronouns (what linguists call the T-V distinction). God tends to be an exception to the usual T-V rules.
The reason for this is that in all these languages, thou started out as simply the singular and you as the plural, with no politeness dimension at all. Using the plural pronoun (or third person pronouns, etc) for politeness was a fad that only spread around Europe in the Middle Ages (give or take).
Religious formulae, however, are generally extremely resistant to language change. This is a very consistent finding across the world; some of our best evidence in historical linguistics comes from religious texts (such as the Rigveda, the Avesta, etc). Religion tends to be, not surprisingly, a highly conservative and ritualised domain.
Thus, prayers in European languages with the T-V distinction generally retain the use of T forms when addressing God. There are all sorts of lovely folk explanations for this, but the real reason is basically just because prayers predate the T-V system altogether.
Thanks! That actually makes a lot of sense.
The wiki article I linked goes into it a bit:
> Early English translations of the Bible used the familiar singular form of the second person, which mirrors common usage trends in other languages. The familiar and singular form is used when speaking to God in French (in Protestantism both in past and present, in Catholicism since the post–Vatican II reforms), German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic and many others (all of which maintain the use of an "informal" singular form of the second person in modern speech). In addition, the translators of the King James Version of the Bible attempted to maintain the distinction found in Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek between singular and plural second-person pronouns and verb forms, so they used thou, thee, thy, and thine for singular, and ye, you, your, and yours for plural.
That doesn't really explain why people used a more familiar form with God, literally the most powerful anything, than they would with mere strangers.
I won't claim this as the one true answer, but one potential reason is that it is encouraged by many religions, including Christian denominations, to have a personal relationship with God. To put it another way, it is exactly God's power which enables God to have a personal relationship with each of us while we, constrained by our own humanity, are only capable of maintaining familiarity with a relatively small number of people.
God is omnipotent and omnipresent after all
In English, some prayers came directly from the King James Bible. The singular second-person pronoun in those prayers corresponded with the informal second-person pronoun in the normal spoken or written English of that time. It would have been weird to change the "hallowed be thy name" written in the Bible to "hallowed be your name" when actually praying just to be more formal towards God. Being formal would also not reflect the teaching that Christians have been adopted as sons and daughters of God. I read that "thou" indicated familiarity and affection like between family members and friends and lovers, whereas "ye" indicated distance, and using "ye" towards someone that you'd normally call "thou" would indicate you had a problem with them. So calling God "ye" would require you to rephrase passages in the Bible and might connote that you don't think God has a friendly or familial sort of relationship with Christians, but is far removed from humans or even antagonistic towards them.
In his prayer Jesus did not address YHWH as Adonai (“Lord”) as is customary in Judaism, but as “Papa/Dad”, Abba in Aramaic, and taught his disciples this form of address.
It's just a cultural tradition. Not sure what kind of answer you're expecting here.
Christianity began as an episode of Undercover Boss, so it makes perfect sense.
Or the judge who sued his condominium demanding its employees call him "doutor" (Your Honor)...
As a Brazilian raised to not care about this stuff, I would say even rebelled a bit, it was weird to basically be required to do so once I reached adulthood. I remember getting in front of a sheriff and having to address him as "doutor". I remember talking to an intern in law firms and he corrected me when I addressed him by name saying, "No, it's DOUTOR Adriano".
Gee, let's not even mention the medical field... veterinarians and nutritionists want to be called "doutor"...
I moved from Brazil to Sweden and it is hard talking to medical doctors, it is so indoctrinated into us.
me: Hi Doctor... I have X problem, Doctor. Could you give me some treatment, Doctor?
Doctor: You can just call me Ana
me: Yes Doctor Ana
Even for professionals that don't have titles if they have authority over you, you need to use the title. VERY evident when talking to police officers always say "Senhor" (sir), police have the power to really screw with you without any reason so better to show respect. You never know when you run into a police officer who enjoys screwing people over.
The Germans are also pretty ridiculous around titles, in that not only can you have multiple titles, and each are mentioned, but you can also have several copies of each. So someone can be Herr Doktor Doktor Professor.
The senior title comes first -- Prof. Dr. Dr. Honorary doctorates are "honoris causa", abbreviated h.c. If you get multiple of these, you write Dr. h.c. mult. So you occasionally find Prof Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. X (would have been the correct way to address Umberto Eco, for instance). After introductions, people generally name only the most senior title, if any.
But "Doctor" means you have an actual PhD, a doctorate. That's a worthy title, IMHO
My country has a fairly high % of PhD holders, but nowhere near enough jobs for them, so they end up getting regular jobs (e.g. I have a friend who got a PhD in laser physics, who now plays with AI models for license plate recognition).
These people usually leave the PhD off their CV, as some employers frown upon it, as they think the person will have higher expectations and be hard to work with.
Your example seems kinda funny.
Most people would think working on AI models for computer vision problems is a perfectly reasonable outcome for a STEM PhD, even if it's not a direct continuation of the thesis research.
Turning a physics PhD into any sort of modeling, statistical analysis or engineering work is pretty normal in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more physics PhDs working in finance than academia and government research labs.
> These people usually leave the PhD off their CV, as some employers frown upon it, as they think the person will have higher expectations and be hard to work with.
Most of them are hard to work with. As is with any people that climb on titles. They consider themselves special. That's why it is difficult for them to integrate in a team.
Not my personal experience. Many of whom I have worked with are quite friendly and open.
PhDs are not take just for social climbing. Many were genuinely interested in the subject until they got disillusioned..
Are PhDs ever taken for social climbing? It's absolutely wild to me that somebody would go through that for status. Doesn't generally give you much of it and costs you a ton in opportunity cost and stress (at least based on the cases I know lol).
That’s really interesting. Re medical field — by contrast surgeons in the UK are called “Mr” (Mister) or “Ms”, for historical reasons.
I feel like the American version of intra-family respect variations is “Father” vs “Dad”.
In my family growing up, my dad’s name was “Dad” from my POV. “Father” was a strange-to-me formality that only a couple of my friends’ families use. “Hey Dad, wanna grab lunch?” is technically using a title of respect, but feels way different than “Hello, Father. Would you like to make lunch plans?”
My kids call me Dad, unless we’re greeting each other like Jerry and Newman on Seinfeld to be funny, which is something always initiated by them: “Hello, Father.” “Hello, Daughter.” kid giggles
One time I heard my kid talking to his dad and calling him “Sir”. That felt utterly foreign to me. If I called my own dad “Sir”, he’d rightfully have assumed I was being a smartass. There’s never another situation where I’d address him that way.
Typo: “…I heard my friend talking to his dad…”
It can't be a coincidence that my Mexican family we were also taught to not use the formal 'usted' as it's too distant and actually has the opposite effect of making others feel disrespected. It's intentionally used when talking badly about someone similar to 'well YOU {usually bad thing but the emphasis on the formal you makes this feel more impactful}'
Funnily enough, você itself was once more formal, having been a contraction of "vossa mercê."
I'm surprised to hear that your family did not use formal language even in prayer. May I ask what religion(s) you grew up practicing? Catholic prayers often use antiquated, formal language (like "vós"). I don't know enough about Candomblé, but at least Nagô Candomblé is pretty highly formalized in the sense that Yorùbá is the liturgical language.
The "Doutor/Doutora" thing bothers me. I see it all the time with my in-laws empregadas, who use it to refer to my father-in-law (who's an MD) and my mother-in-law (who isn't). It feels weirdly obsequious in that context, even though there's a very clear power and class hierarchy.
> The younger person also addresses the older person, usually with a title or another word that fits their relationship, but not their name. Only the older person addresses the younger one with their name. (There can be more nuance.)
I love this. I'm an old French guy and still can't quite accept when srangers in an email (or a machine, a system, a web form) adress me using my first name.
Being "on a first name basis" still has meaning for me -- or it would, if it had for anyone else, which clearly is absolutely not the case anymore.
Interesting, as a German (which also has a similar system), I am the complete opposite, I find it super irritating when people address me by my last name. And the worst part is having to figure out how to address others, especially people you've known for a while but aren't really close to, e.g. say long-time neighbors I rarely meet.
Luckily, in the IT industry, it's common to just use first names with everybody.
Yes. I find addressing people by surname uniquely stupid. Like are you calling the person or the historical clan? It perhaps made sense for medieval lords to address their underlings as if they were interchangeable, in our modern context that has largely done away with royalty, using surnames makes no sense.
It becomes even more interesting when traditionally cultures (like mine) don't use surnames, but modern IT systems stemming from the Anglo Saxon culture force people to arbitrarily assign one of their names as a surname or IT systems generally don't work.
I have a very common first name (Dave) and a very uncommon last name (Pifke, pronounced PIF-key). The majority of my close friends call me by my last name, since there are several other Daves and Davids in our friend group.
My brother's friends do likewise, since his first name is Mike and he runs with a bunch of other Mikes and Michaels.
There's a naming collision when my brother and I hang out together, but since we live in different states, the system usually works.
Similar here. My last name is pretty unusual, but my first name is common, so I generally go by my last name with friends and colleagues. Oddly, I've gotten so used to this that it feels a little bit more formal when someone addresses me by my first name.
To make matters even more complicated, when I do use my first name, I almost always use an abbreviation. The only people that use my full first name are my parents, sister, and (occasionally) my wife, and it's really off-putting to hear it otherwise.
Names are interesting and weird.
There's always first initial partial last. DPif and MPif
Same. I work with a girl with first name Emily last name rhymes with “Wacky”. The latter is so much for fun to say and avoids collisions.
I think American high school kids often refer to and address one another by surname. It was the case when at my son's high school, as I recall at my own, and I think at my wife's. It might have been the case at my father's, and perhaps my wife's parents--I'd have to look at the yearbooks.
My experience is this mostly between men and generally not as common as it used to be.
My dad is called by his surname by some of his high school pals and call some of them by surname when he's around them (but not in reference to them if he's talking to me). Thinking back to my high school days in the late 00's I can only remember athletes being called by their last name. Perhaps because of football or sports that you just have your last name on your jersey. It would be an interesting thing to understand more.
I could be regional too. I'm from the US in the midwest.
This is what we used to do, because in one friend group there would be 3 mikes and 2 steves. At some point, you have to use nicknames or last names.
Nicknames include variations like Mikey, Mickey, Mikail, Big Michael, Little Michael, Gas Station Michael, Angry Michael, Tony (obligatory wrong name your group uses because there were already too many Michaels and this Michael liked his middle name)
and Mike.
a lot of the time its just a nickname. public schools in the US are huge and then when it comes to sports the athletes are visiting other schools. before i knew it id meet 12 new Jakes every year so everyone goes by nicknames or last name
theres an occasional phenomenon in the US, often referenced in sitcoms, where an individuals entire first and last name sticks as their "nickname"
In my high school (Massachusetts, USA), almost all the students went by their last names, or something related to their last names. Ashley Milford was Milf, Samantha St. Paul was Saint Paul, Ryan Leonard was Lenny, Kevin Doo was Kevin Doo, for example. I'm still my surname in my head.
I learned later that we had a reputation for being a jock school though, because we all had to play a sport each semester.
There's also the "when you say Mr. lastname, I turn around and look for my father" type of responses when using someone's last name.
This was absolutely not the norm I experienced in the 2000s.
I did in that timeframe. To be clear, it's not "Mr Surname" but just plain "Surname". I have a lot of friends like that, "Boughter", "Mooney", etc. Not everyone, but particularly if the first name was a common one or they played sports.
I'm actually surprised you're not familiar with the practice. Think Scully from X-Files or Stifler from American Pie.
Not just Scully, but essentially everybody from every doctor or police procedural goes by their last name. The shows aren't called Meredith's Anatomy, Gregory, Adrian, or Theo.
>Stifler from American Pie
I always assumed it was his first name, thanks for expanding my understanding just a little!
I experienced this at an boy's prep high school in the late 90s. It really was alienating to have friends I'd known since kindergarten start to refer to me by my last name out of sheer conformity.
It’s mostly a thing among kids heavily into sports, in my experience.
I suspect the equivalent for 90s/00s nerdy types is e-mail addresses.
I am still "squirrel" to some college friends. And think of many of my college friends and co-workers as their username.
Nor I in the 2010's/2020's; I have to assume GP is either significantly older than us, or from a community with a strong cultural bubble that may be clouding their judgement.
Addressing each other by surname is something that occurs principally in the context of sports, but outside of that you'd just address someone by given name. That was the case as regards children addressing each other or teachers addressing students. Students addressing teachers, of course, would address them by Mr/Mrs/Ms. <surname>. There are some oddball cases where teachers insist their students address them by given name, though.
Also, you made me feel old.
It is also used when there's name collision
If there's five people named John in the same class in school or the same team at work, it is not uncommon for all John to go by last name.
In my circle usually people would either go by their middle name or they'd very quickly earn themselves a nickname... although now that I think about it we did use lastnames for some guys. Whatever works, really. Nobody was a stickler about how they were addressed.
The surname thing was extremely common even outside of sports at my high school.
Were your "American" high schools located on some other continent?
The fact that different cultures evolved such systems independently proves that the general idea does make sense. Case in point: you go to an American company, the CEO says "call me simply John, feel free to chat up whenever you feel like it, we're all family here" and then you go talk to him about sex life problems of your marriage and he just stares at you awkwardly. Having explicit layers of social "closeness" makes things much easier to manage. "We address each other using last names, therefore I won't tell him about sex life of my marriage".
In your example the American CEO said you are family.
Do you frequently tell you mom, dad, brothers, children and in laws about your sex life?
Of course not. Whatever problem the American in this hypothetical is having, name conventions are not likely to help.
This wasn't just "sex life", it was "sex life problems of your marriage". And yes, there's a good chance I'd go to family and close friends if I was having intimacy problems with my spouse (with the approval of my spouse, of course!), assuming I have a close personal relationship with those people.
It's weird to me so many people in America feel they can't talk to anyone but strangers on their internet or paid specialists about their sexual issues. Sex is generally a pretty normal part of life, especially between two married people, and yet everyone feels they can't talk about it at all. It's an unhealthy mindset IMO.
is it particularly american to avoid bothering others with my own problems of any kind?
i live in the pnw which is somewhat infamous for its "mind your own business" culture. we have a transplant friend from the midwest who seem less shameful in asking for what amounts to free labor and i wonder if its a regional cultural thing within the US.
if forced by auditors to bother others with my problems, intimacy issues would be near the end of the list.
if this is american, which cultures encourage bothering others with personal problems?
I'm mostly agreeing with anal_reactor, that for most people there are hierarchies of closeness one will probably have with other people. I'm not talking about chatting up intimacy issues with any random neighbor or business contact, I'm talking about close friends and relatives.
Once again, not just out of the blue calling up that cousin you haven't spoken to in a decade and start unloading on them about your emotional issues of the day, but people in your life that truly know the day to day you. And I'm also not saying we should all invite our friends over for some barbecue and then just start sharing every detail of our sex lives. But if we are having problems in the intimate parts of our lives, we should have some people who we can talk to about it. People who understand your deep values, people who understand your goals in life, people who really get you and love you.
I think more people should probably have more deep connections with others. Everyone sees it as "bother others with my problems" and then we wonder why we have such a mental health crisis in this country and have a loneliness epidemic. Almost as if these things are related...nah! Seriously, is there absolutely nobody in your life who you think wouldn't find it a bother to listen to whatever is emotionally unsettling you? That the only way for anyone to help you with a problem would be to pay them? This would seem incredibly distressing to me, to feel like I have no real close community at all.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have paid professionals for mental health resources as well. They absolutely have a place, and I think a lot of Americans don't utilize these services enough for a multitude of reasons. But in the same way you don't go to the ER for a minor cut you shouldn't have to rely on paid therapists for your day to day emotional issues.
As for asking about free labor, once again it really depends on the context of the request and the relationship I have with the person. Once again, hierarchies of relationships. I've absolutely asked friends and neighbors to help work on a project around the house, and I've absolutely been one of those people asked to help and been there. I wouldn't think anything of the ask, and I wouldn't think anything of someone saying no to me asking. It would definitely depend on the context though. A random stranger knocking on my door asking me to redo their whole home's plumbing? Probably not! A neighbor I've talked to a few times asking for a spare set of hands for a minute as they hang something outside? If I have a minute, sure thing, I'll be right there. A close friend needing a hand pulling some ethernet cable throughout their home or work on refinishing their billiard table or painting a room? I'll grab some beers and be there in an hour.
My home is the first house in the neighborhood, so I tend to get a number of people who have minor car trouble break down stop in front. I go out there with a tool bag and a sealed bottle of water ready to help every time I see someone out there. But oh no, what a nut, offering all that free labor to absolute strangers.
> bothering others with personal problems
Ultimately my point is people should have other people in their lives where talking about intimate details and issues in their lives shouldn't be seen as a bother, but as something they would want to help with. And that I think it's a symptom of our society being sick that so many people think helping others, even supposedly close friends and family, with their issues is being bothered.
> Do you frequently tell you mom, dad, brothers, children and in laws about your sex life?
Yes.
Do you find they look at you the same way your CEO did? If not, you apparently have unusually "special" relationships.
Sometimes. Those who don't usually also enjoy hearing me in a much more relaxed tone, whereas those who do end up perceiving me through the lens of much more official language. I still fail to see what's so absurd about this.
Do you... literally talk to your boss the same way you talk to your best friend?
This is a very confusing discussion.
If you live in a Robert Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land-esque sex positive utopia where you're constantly going around talking about sex to everyone and getting positive reception, talk about it with your CEO as well, I guess?
I don't talk to my work relationship only CEO about anything sexual. That's just common sense, and is built into our social mores, no need for some hokey Mr. Blahblah unless he wants to be called that explicitly, and I'm fine with that.
Interesting choice of username, given this comment ;-)
If you address him as anything more than Mr Reactor you'll learn all about what he gets up to...
He's anal
>I find it super irritating when people address me by my last name.
Me too. There are still German companies where coworkers address others with Herr or Frau followed by their last name.
I find it also interesting how people that learn German understand the difference between the "you" in formal ("sie") and informal ("du") version, but often don't understand in which context du use them. In most cases you can use the informal "du" nowadays, especially when you are out with somebody for a beer.
After elementary school we had this interesting shift form addressing the other children with first name to addressing them with last name. We were circa 11 years old.
It's a generational thing. There has definitely been a change in recent years, especially the younger generation can no longer do much with the formal “Sie”, but of course they know it. I am 46 years old and have grown up with and been familiar with the “Du/Sie” dichotomy from the very beginning. It also has many advantages and offers clear relationships: There is no ambiguity as to which pronouns I use to address someone, older people and superiors always use “Sie”. With younger people/peers of the same age, you can quickly agree on a “Du”. These days, it's unclear to me who I can address as “Du”. I'm a friend of clarifying this before starting, but it's always a meta conversation, which can hinder the flow of conversation. Besides, it's a kind of badge of honor and a sign of trust when you're offered a “Du”. When I address anyone of our management team as “Du” these days, it irritates me - I'm not “best friends” with them, nor do I feel closer or more connected. For me, the distinction is/was never an expression of whether you are on an equal footing or not.
Interesting how you write "Du" and not "du". I'm French and I've been living in Germany for 20 years. I understand and use "du/Sie" more or less appropriately (we have the same dichotomy in French). What I still cannot wrap my head around after all this time is why/when some people use "du/Du", "dein/Dein", "dich/Dich" in writing (to be clear: not at the beginning of a sentence). I guess "Du" is somewhere inbetween "du" und "Sie" on the politeness scala but I never dared to ask. I'm only using lowercase "du". What would be a rule of thumb on how/when to use the uppercase "Du"?
"Du" and "du" are generally 100% equivalent. Regular casing-rules apply, e.g. in the beginning of a sentence it's "Du" but inside it's "du". "Kannst du mir helfen?". "Du kannst dir doch selbst helfen!"
Sometimes it's written "Du" even if in the middle of the sentence when addressing someone directly. It's technically incorrect, but it's used for emphasis and hence politeness, and that's probably where your feeling comes from.
The same can happen with other words that are getting capitalized for similar reasons, but when going strictly by the book it's grammatically incorrect. An example would be "das Große Ganze" where it should be "große" but it is capitalized to emphasize the connection/phrase.
>It's technically incorrect, but it's used for emphasis and hence politeness, and that's probably where your feeling comes from.
That's wrong, it's not technically incorrect. In fact before 2006 the only correct way to address someone personally in written form was to capitalize the Du / Sie / Ihr. Since then you are allowed to write it either way. I still use the capitalized form because I'm old and that's what I learned back in school.
Fair enough.
> Since then you are allowed to write it either way
Okay, my interpretation is that it doesn't really make sense within the language rules, so they changed it but allowed to use the old style to make the transition easier. ;-)
> I still use the capitalized form because I'm old and that's what I learned back in school.
Impossible to keep up with all the Rechtschreibreformen anyways.
Thank you and nosebear for the clarification! Now I understand better why some of my colleagues (like my boss, older) use "Du" and some don't. I'll stick to not using it, there are enough grammatic pitfalls elsewhere in the German language (not that French is any easier for foreigners, I'm sure).
I love and hate German for this; it's a language whose formal pitfalls and vagaries seem almost designed to sort people into highly-refined strata of education.
It must be so cool to see all of them "from the top" (i.e. someone who has been natively-and-highly educated, immersed in the language for their whole life); but it's from the outside it's like a fancy club that you just can't seem to get into :)
It seems sort of like calling other people ma'am and sir in America. Everyone knows what those words mean, but younger people will almost never use them (except in specific American subcultures). Some people may be offended if you call them sir/ma'am.
The YouTube algorithm has seen fit to serve me a bunch of American police bodycam videos lately. I find it super bizarre that a policeman will address everyone as sir. Including some deranged crackhead, without pants, charging at him with a sword. Decidedly not a "sir".
In Denmark nobody adresses each other formally, unless you're royalty. Parliament also does it during debates, but that's pretty much it. It's weird when it happens, and it's usually some store clerk that does it out of a misguided attempt at politeness, but to me at least it has the opposite effect. I am not a Hr. (sir), I'm just some dickhead buying cigarettes at 1 AM.
I Denmark we at least pretend everyone is equal. The CEO of the company is just John. We eat lunch in the same break room at the same time.
The way US cops talk is a whole thing. It’s one of the most-distinctive job-related American English variants. Even more so than white-collar “business English” (“let’s take this offline and circle back to it, as per my prior email”)
Some of it’s weird posturing (I’d put the “sir” thing in that category) and a bunch of it’s a combination of actually-effective and folk-supposed-effective ways of speaking to dazzle jurors, plus probably some other motivations and influences thrown in (some Hollywood-military turns of phrase and vocabulary, certainly)
In Spanish the Police/Civil Guard (militarized police) does the same, they will address you like "Disculpe, caballero" - excuse me, (Gentle) Sir. They will address you very formaly, and you might shit bricks on the road in case you messed up something or have a faulty light.
US English doesn’t really have an informal version of “sir” for the situation you described. Closest would be “hey” or “yo” etc. but those aren’t even (pro)nouns.
Sounds like a duel with a knight, so "sir" feels appropriate.
More seriously, I think it's possible that "sir" can be used in a way that casts everyone as equals. Like, you can be in a crackhead's den and recognize that he is in important person in that environment.
I think it also highly depends on where you're from.
Traditionally in Bavaria you'd have used "Du/Ihr" in shops or on the streets colloquially even decades ago, and yet from time to time you'd ran into people (always from Northern Germany) who seemed very surprised you'd not use "Sie/Ihnen".
Of course I'm overgeneralizing and I think I've had like 2 jobs in my life (since the late 90s) where some people were called Herr/Frau X instead of the just the first name, be it IT or not.
As a born and raised English speaker and fluent Italian speaker, I still don't love the "tu / lei". It's very... binary as to what gets used. Sometimes that's easy, but the marginal cases can be difficult to figure out.
I think the tone and posture when addressing someone convey enough formality. Like if I met Barack Obama, I would be very formal and respectful in my bearing and language, but of course still use 'you'.
In the weird edge cases you can simply err on the side of politeness and use the formal version. Worst case scenario they'll simply tell you to drop it and use tu instead.
From what I understand, it used to be similar here in Sweden, but that change with the du reform in the 60s and 70s, when people started saying "du" to everyone, and "ni" became purely plural (unless you're speaking to royalty).
We also pretty much always use first name, at least everywhere I've been. Would feel weird to call people by their last name.
ever have people at work addressing people by only their first name initial in email?
someone ive never met in person and uses my first name on work calls referring to me as "b" in email. its like the wears-a-bowtie-to-work guy of email.
come across a few of these people and have never noticed a tell they were that type of person outside the text of their email
It's interesting. My closest friends use my last name, while everyone else uses my first name at work. Apparently it was a hangover from the custom at old British public schools that some old Indian schools retained into the 70s/80s. I sort of like it.
Same here, but the reason is simple - there was a bunch of people with the same first name in my class (1st grade). So we all went by our last name. And, as those still are close friends of mine, after all these decades, they (and everyone else I know from that time) use my last name when addressing me. And other people sometimes pick it up and use it too..
I went to a British private school (which we also call "public schools" to annoy Americans) and it was certainly still hanging on there into the 80s.
My brother attended the same school where we briefly overlapped so I was by default "Minter" and when the distinction was needed I was "Minter Minor" and he would have been "Minter Major".
Like many things it doesn't make much sense in retrospect.
Edit: People do still often call me "Mister Minter" where I'd expect them to use my first name, but I think they just like the alliteration. It's not old schoolfriends doing it.
This is remarkable because from my outsider glimpse German culture puts an emphasis on formality and credentials. If someone has a signature like "Dr. Ing. Prof. Anselm Schultz" am sure not opening my email with "Hi Anselm".
It changed a lot in the last 25 years. But it can depend from place to place. One of my friends has a Master of Engineering and he was a bit surprised when somebody in Austria addressed him with "Oh, Herr Ingenieur!"
Austria is special. Using an academic title is customary, and job titles are still common. Many foreigners think Austria and Germany are similar in terms of culture, but there are notable differences between the two countries that can be traced back to their history. I have an Austrian mother and a German father, so I experienced both cultures.
Mr. Doctor Professor
I appreciate that too at my former university in Germany, it's kinda "very modern" and people always use their first names for everything, professors and students alike. But it gets complicated when emailing professors that are only losely related to the uni.
It's quite common, even the norm these days, to address people by their first names in professional settings, among colleagues.
The thing is that this is also becoming/has become the norm when you get correspondance from strangers when the standard etiquette is to use title + surname, as in all European countries, I suppose.
Now, I think when people address you by your surname only, either orally or in writing, it is irritating.
Well, I personally find title + surname the worst; it's obnoxious and elitist; my (first) name isn't "engineer". I can live with it, though. I just kinda hate people who demand it of others.
So, clearly, you can't please everybody.
By title I mean "Mister", etc. Perhaps "Engineer" is a German thing ;)
And then you must know (if this is a system: store) the person's preferred gender, and in some cultures marital status.
Not all European countries. We phased the title and surname addressing out during the 70s here in Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du-reformen
Personally I get annoyed only if a sales person addresses me by first name. There is no other setting where I would prefer a stranger to address me using my full name, unless we’re in some context where there are dozens or hundreds of strangers so one can not expect my name is unique.
Tangent:
My father's family is German and all of the males in the family only used their middle name for everything except legal and financial documents. For example, Carl Hans Schmidt (to pick a semi-made-up example) would introduce himself as Hans to everyone he met, and the family would refer to him as Hansi.
I always wondered if that was a German (or regional) tradition, or a fun family quirk.
(The males have all regrettably passed on but I asked my aunts once and they said they had no idea why or how that was a thing, that's just what they did.)
Spanish too. Francisco Javier -> Javi, or maybe Paco (Francisco), but Javi would be the obvious case.
Francisco -> Paco from Saint Francis holding a Pater Comunitatis title in Latin.
But, as a weirder case:
José María -> Chema
Luis María -> Luisma
Juan Manuel -> Juanma
José Manuel -> Chema/Josema
Juan Ramón -> Juanra
María José (women's name) -> Marijose
My personal favourite is Juan Carlos -> Juanca. Sounds great in British English.
Yeah I have had bosses refer to me by my last name and it's effin irritating. I almost always prefer relaxed, casual attitudes more than frumpy traditionalist for no good reason situations. I understand rare formal occasions but I don't want to put on some mask of formality every day. I consider everyone equal, at least as far as value as a human being. Just treat me with respect, I'm fine with you using my first name.
Last name address is when things get real. Government and divorse lawyers real. Time to sober up and answer carefully.
Not a good feeling, when people do it. The only thing worse is name + patronymic. That could never be good news.
Now that I know that every culture approaches this differently, it takes zero effort to not be annoyed when someone does something different than what I expect.
^^^ what this cunt said
found the australian
Irish, we're basically proto-austalis
With 'ned' in the username I might've thought Glaswegian. :D
Your comments boggles me. You understand their point and immediately misapply that understanding.
These things come and go across times and cultures. Even in the United States, which many people think of as highly informal, it was once common to refer to almost everyone outside the family formally. My grandmother talked to her next door neighbor everyday and they said "Hello, Mrs. G-" and "How are you, Mrs. S-". You also see this in 19th century American and English literature ("Mr. Darcy")
At least when I was growing up, it was still the norm in the South/Texas. My parents would have never referred to the elderly in our neighborhood by their first names.
I also great up in Texas (30yo now). I was raised to always say sir/ma'am but for most adults that I knew well, we were on a first name basis. Deacons at church were usually on a first name basis (my parents volunteered a lot so I knew them all really well) but the one noticeable exception was the pastor and anyone in a teaching role.
Teachers were always addressed by Mr/Mrs/Ms and this extended into Scouts as well. For anyone I don't know, I tend to just say "sir/ma'am" (employee at the grocery store for example) unless. If the person has a professional title that I know of, I will use the title (Dr. Martin, Professor Lake, etc).
My parents I suppose were very similar. Sir/Ma'am for most interactions, but I don't recall hearing a Mr/Mrs/Ms when they referenced other people in our lives.
Since I've moved to Europe a few years back, I'm trying to follow the local customs more, which at first glance seem very similar (Netherlands). Formal for strangers, informal for basically everyone else. I've tried using the formal with some older neighbours and they always tell me stop immediately!
> Deacons at church were usually on a first name basis (my parents volunteered a lot so I knew them all really well) but the one noticeable exception was the pastor and anyone in a teaching role.
That brings up an actually interesting exception. At my church, the pastors were the only adults we'd ever call by their first name, sort of. Our pastor, for example, was always Brother Mike, not Pastor <Last Name>.
Are you certain that Brother Mike wasn't a monk as well, so in a religious context "Brother Mike" was his only proper name?
AIUI a Catholic monk who is also an ordained priest is addressed as Father not Brother (certainly this is true of the Dominicans I've met).
I think this is also true for Orthodox monks.
I'm not sure if there's a Christian denomination that has pastors who aren't priests, and also has monks. So this sounds to me more like a situation where all fellow members of the church are addressed as Brother/Sister.
> I was raised to always say sir/ma'am
I also grew up in Texas and to this day I still tend to use sir/ma'am for most adults I don't know. Every now and then it seems to throw people off. People don't seem to expect to hear "Yes, sir" very often it seems.
I think there's a difference between "excuse me sir, you dropped your wallet" and "yessir".
In rural Georgia my father's wife, still 15+ years my senior, would always "yessir" and "no sir" me, just as she did with everyone else (ma'am for women, of course). And this was in the past 10 years. Even my half-siblings from rural Alabama do that generally, but not nearly so strictly with family like myself. Use of last names, though, is still reserved for non-family elders.
Conversely, in coastal California that kind of speech is actively (even aggressively) discouraged, such as in public schools, higher grades, especially. It's still appreciated in more traditional communities, though, such as black or immigrant Asian communities. Code switching isn't limited to certain minority groups; even affluent coastal white folks often end of code switching.
Giving respect based on seniority is one of the major reasons why autocracies thrive unchecked in some countries as younger people are unable to hold older folks accountable.
In its extreme shapes maybe, but just paying respect to the elders for having lived much longer and seen so much more, is something that should be normal in my opinion.
It used to be a lot more reasonable back in the day.
When the world didn't change as quickly, or didn't change at all, the elders truly knew everything the young ones knew, and so much more. They had truly seen everything and had plenty of experience with the problems young people were struggling with.
This very much isn't the case any more. I'm in my twenties (technically part of gen Z), but I already feel like I don't understand the Tiktok-using, trap-loving part of my generation. The 14-18 year olds probably have very different issues now than I did at that age, and that wasn't even so long ago. People from my parents' generation are out of the loop completely, their world still revolves around linear TV, college as a path for success in life etc.
Oh, I am also not asking my grandparents for concrete life or technical advice. I am just talking about respect of their age, what they experienced and lived through.
I really don't get why just the concept of deserving respect for having lived longer - why does that make you more deserving of respect, irrespective of how you lived?
Just the fact that they lived so much longer. And are usually more wise in life experience.
That doesn't mean I tolerate old farts shouting at my children for being young. Or excuse shitty behavior in general.
But the default for me is paying respect for the elders. Offering them my seat in the train if there is no other, etc.
> Just the fact that they lived so much longer.
But... why does living longer in and of itself command an extra degree of respect?
> And are usually more wise in life experience.
assertion ;)
> That doesn't mean I tolerate old farts shouting at my children for being young. Or excuse shitty behavior in general.
> But the default for me is paying respect for the elders.
> Offering them my seat in the train if there is no other, etc.
I offer old people my seat because they'll likely feel pain if they have to stand up for a while, they might fall down if the bus goes bump, etc. I won't be pained by standing up for 45 minutes so it doesn't really come at any cost to me.
i.e. I'm not giving up my seat because I respect old people for being old.
> Just the fact that they lived so much longer.
That's not a reason, you're just repeating the question. "Having lived long" is a value neutral statement of fact. How do you derive value from that?
> And are usually more wise in life experience.
So is that your true/only reason, a statistical probability of "knowing more"?
"That's not a reason, you're just repeating the question. "Having lived long" is a value neutral statement of fact. How do you derive value from that?"
It is a reason in itself.
I don't know if I manage to live 10 years more, not speaking of 50 years more.
Living long is a achievent on its own, not be brought down early by life. Because there is a lot that life has to offer to bring you down.
That requires a minimum of wisdom.
~99% of people manage that, it's like the worst possible indicator for the wisdom or quality of a person.
All while at the same time putting everybody who didn't get the chance yet below them. It feels very arbitrary - there are a lot of better indicators than age for that.
Maybe lets have a talk in 50 years about it?
Think of it more as a little extra atop the basic courtesy due to all people (unless they prove otherwise).
I see basic courtesy as required, but respect must be earned and can be withdrawn. Respect is earned through good behavior, not by simply growing old.
I'm not sure tik tok expertise implies worldliness or wisdom :)
Sorry -- "trap-loving"?
A genre of music.
It's a tougher sell when the younger generation gets the short end of the stick.
In a way that would be a good barometer of how that society thinks it's doing and how promising the younger generation sees its future, as prepared by their elders.
It's all the more interesting in countries where the population pyramid if fully reversed, and elders have way more power than the younger working class.
seniority as in rank, and respect for elders as in filial piety in East Asia are two very different things. Autocracy relies on execution of arbitrary power, and the latter places a limit on it. It's why after the revolution in China, Confucianism is the first thing they tried to get rid of. I stayed in Beijing during the covid lockdowns and there was one group of people that could do what they wanted "dancing grannies", old people who meet up to dance in public parks because messing with them was seen as too offensive.
Autocracy is usually driven by the opposite, unrestricted mobilization of the youth. In particular true in the West today. Bukele is not exactly a pensioner, and if the US has displayed one thing in recent times it isn't respect for the age of their leaders to put it mildly.
Yes, but traditionalist power structures are still authoritarian. Insamuch as they oppose autocracies, it is by virtue of having got there first and not yielding power to the new tyrant[0]. The problem is not the age of the ruler, or the legitimacy of the power structure, but the resulting distribution of power.
Insamuch as Confucian filial piety can be a check on upstart autocrats, that's useful, but not sufficient. There's nothing stopping the Maoist autocracy from embracing Confucius[1]; Mao just didn't want to for ideological reasons. Autocrats are ultimately building a coalition of scam victims that are all locked in the same room with one another. They don't care who's in the room as long as they won't unify against the leader.
In the US, we have Trump, the oldest US President in history, with, to put it mildly, "autocratic ambitions". His coalition includes old people, who vote early and often, and want to impose the social order of the 1950s upon the country. Almost[2] nothing about them suggests that they're going to meaningfully check Trump's power anytime soon; if anything, they're the only[3] faction of the Trump coalition that's gotten anything out of the deal.
[0] If the autocrat wins, they will eventually just become the new traditionalist power structure. Every pirate wants to become an admiral.
[1] Mussolini recognized the Vatican as a sovereign state purely to get the Pope to shut up about him.
[2] Insert clip of some old guy vandalizing a Cybertruck here.
[3] No, I don't count pardoning Ross Ulbricht. The Libertarian Party sold their soul for a donut.
Everyone in Yugoslavia was called "Drug" (pronounced droog, Friend), it'd be hard to claim it wasn't autocratic. Same with the USSR and China.
Communist Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc and China was supposed to be flat and everyone was "comrade". Did that prevent autocracy?
I never truly understood linguistic formality until I was teaching a class and one of the students addressed me as “Josh”. My full name is “Joshua” and students virtually always used to call me that, but that semester, the computer system put my name as “Josh” and it felt weirdly disrespectful when a student called me that even though I know none was intended.
It's interesting for me as I'm Serbian but grew up in Indonesia. In Serbian we very much have honorifics (I think honorifics is the wrong word, not sure what the correct one is) and rules like "Younger always addresses the older with vi instead of ti, and vama instead of tebi etc. unless you're relatives or are close", but it also applies generally for strangers, so even if you're the same age or even if you're older, it's more polite to use the formal forms.
In Indonesia nobody really cares too much, and I called my teachers everything from "Ibu X" (Ibu meaning ma'am/miss, but also mother) to their first names or a mixture like "Ibu FirstOrLastName". At best you'll get a "bapak/ibu" which is basically just sir/ma'am, but I've been called "kak" (lit. translated it's something like "little sister/brother", it's a very asian concept and a lot of cultures have the same, like oniichan).
I always struggle when I go back to Serbia, 'cause I wasn't really brought up with the importance of honorifics. It feels weird when I get a kid using honorifics with me, feels like I'm 60 (I'm in my 20s), and likewise people look at me like I just spat in their face if I don't use the honorifics sometimes.
Language is truly fascinating!
I live in Montevideo, here people use "usted" (the formal "you" in Spanish) to show respect to older people. But there's no strict rule about when to switch from "tu" (informal you) to "usted". So you kind of guess based on how old someone looks.
The problem is, if you say "usted" to someone who doesn't see themselves as old, they might take offence. So, trying to be polite in Uruguay can backfire if your mental age calculation is off!
I spent almost 10 years trying to avoid calling my mother and father in law by their first names. In my home country's language there are words for "mother in law" and "father in law" you can use in a second person context, but English doesn't have any. My wife has the opposite problem. She's gotten stuck calling my parents "Mr. XYZ" and "Mrs. XYZ."
My inlaws are addressed "mom" and "dad" - is that weird?
I've decided that in English, every way to address your inlaws is weird until you settle on something specifically with them. "Mom" and "Dad" or "John" and "Jane", both will be weird until you've used them for a while.
And if they don't like what you picked, you'll know pretty quick.
It’s somehow both too familiar and overly deferential. Vis-a-vis my wife’s parents, I’m not a child, but an adult, though of less seniority.
Mumble years ago I started using "Mom" and "Dad" as soon as we got married; my wife did the same with my folks — and my folks did the same with my grandparents.
I feel like tu vs vous is extra annoying in French when you're speaking to someone who's not a stranger. I have no desire to judge if you think you're too famous of eg a professor for me to say tu, your success doesn't create a hierarchy between us, and it's annoying if you think so. I much prefer English for that.
It's not really a question of fame but more of respect, we are not relatives, so you do not use tu.
agree to disagree
I try to get people to avoid my first name, mostly because they can't pronounce it. The only time I had a stranger pronounce it right was when we were meeting w/ the Republic of Ireland tech transfer office.
O, Mev!
Would addressing you by your mail address work ?
Handling people's name is I think the bane of our field, and leads to many of the awful choices like forcing fields with a first and last name for instance, or requesting people's gender to properly set the Mr and Mrs. As a dev I'm not happy about it, as a user I hate it, I'm not sure the majority of people are happy either with the current state of things.
Accepting that it's a machine sending the mail could simplify all of this quite a bit, provided people are fine by being addressed in an impersonal and inorganic way.
If you mean snail mail address, no it wouldn't. It's common to share these between people who have the same last (or sometimes first) names. Things get really fun when it's. both, e.g. a man marrying somebody who has the same first name as their sister. This actually happened in my (distant) family.
If you mean an email (or the part before the @), also no. People sometimes sign up from addresses like contact@example.com, and "dear contact" would be super confusing.
The "right thing to do" is to have a "what should we call you" field, which should be completely separate from any names collected for legal purposes, if any.
> If you mean an email (or the part before the @), also no. People sometimes sign up from addresses like contact@example.com, and "dear contact" would be super confusing.
I was going for the principle that we're not trying to mimic human emotions when it's a mail to remind you to accept the latest TOS.
So, no "Dear", no trying to come up with something socially acceptable, just plain "miki123211@hn.xx, please review our newest Terms and Services at https://....../...."
The "what should we call you" field sounds attractive, but would be ripe for abuse IMHO. Not on technical terms, but users would definitely play with it to have you send "Mrs DeepshitFuckHorse please confirm your email at...." to random addresses for instance, or any other vector that we're not thinking about right now.
Earlier everything was based on 'handles' and using them was fine and expected.. As networks adopt everyone and become used for formal things it's gotten more complicated to integrate rules of different systems.
I've started to prefer messages that just start with "Hello,".
This is already plenty common with names.
I tend to use fuck/off as name/surname for completely throwaway accounts, and "dear mr. Fuck" is something I received once.
When I was in university, a friend of mine used to address me by my unix username.
Only one?
You got off light. I had a good number of people call me by my username at my undergrad.
When I went to grad school, they let us select user ids. My user name matched my first name, most elegant solution to that problem yet ;)
This rules and your friend is awesome
It's not unusual for people to use the name they know you by. In high school, there was someone who addressed me as Ix, the name I used in multiplayer Duke Nukem. He didn't know my name.
There are several people I know primarily through wechat, where it's almost always unnecessary to address people by name because messages have only one recipient. Sometimes this has led to conversations like this:
> What should I call you? 颖？
> OK.
[I was not especially reassured by that response.]
> re was someone who addressed me as Ix, the name I used in multiplayer Duke Nukem
Heh, there are still some people who call me by my nickname back from 2000s. It doesn't help what it means something between "the beast" and "the thing" and I had people of the old clout be quite offended by it. Including my mother.
Very interesting! I work for (probably) the most well known German company. Here, it's always advised to use the first name & the 2nd person singular pronoun ("du"; you) instead of the more formal third person plural pronoun ("Sie"; you)
Company standards differ and every time you meet someone new, say in a Teams-Meeting, the older person generally offers you to use "Du". You may or may not accept it
It's basically "respecting your elders"
While I (21 years of age) talk with my boss on this personal level, I can't get myself to address other older (higher ranked) employees by their first name. Saying Mr. or Mrs. is kinda required for me as the person I am, because I always try to respect them. (This doesn't apply to some other older (higher ranked) employees, those with which I don't have much to work with. While I do respect them, it's not the same type of respect I have for them)
This may sound very confusing and it even is for me, as I am not German and merely adapt to what is the cultural standard here.
My culture we address everyone by their first name. The only thing we must absolutely add are the social prefixes for older folks (typically above a 5 year range? depends on some factors.) I could never address, mention or talk about uncle / aunt XYZ as just XYZ. It's very crucial to always add that, especially for people you know. If you don't know them, just say the preferred prefix as well, it shows a basic level of respect We don't really use our surnames - it's more to identify, who exactly we are talking about. For example, when talking about "Michael", but the involved in the conversation don't know who we're talking about we usually just say "from the house of surname" (house of is the literal translation)
Spaniard here; addressing someone by the last name looks really outdated.
As a tourist, it's a cheat code to be hyper formal. Gets you instant goodwill.
Spanish has actually three levels of formality when addressing someone by name:
<First name>: Informal, casual conversation.
Don <First name>: More formal, conveys respect while still indicating some closeness.
Señor <Last name>: Most formal, normally used in writing.
Using only someone's last name is just plain weird. If you want to speak formally to someone just address them as "usted", it will get you the same goodwill without sounding off.
Don it's very outdated unless you address a very important person.
Don is especially susceptible to huge regional differences. It's as GP described in Honduras and I think as you described in Spain.
I agree it's more likely to be used by older generations but it's not uncommon to hear it around either, especially when addressing or refering to elders
Well, corporation addressing clients would use señor/señora but between older/middle aged men. For anyone under 40 it looks a bit old-fashioned. They would just switch to an 'usted/ustedes' person (formal you/yall, for HN speakers) and no one will feel like they were in 1960.
And even with that, people under 35 will just stay at the informal (normal you) "tu" case.
Same.
The only situation where I call people by their last name in my language is when it's their nickname. Like there were two "Johns" so we call the second one "Smith".
In Portugal it's very associated with military service. I don't think I've ever been addressed by my last name here.
In Spain maybe if you are something really important or being addressed on very formal environments. Maybe a boss/manager from a corporation addressing clients...
Has tutoiement changed too? How does that work with machines, do they always use vous form?
Typically machines/websites should use "vous", but it is more and more common to read "tu", depending on the target audience and the company marketing.
I'm Lithuanian but lived over 15 years (near half my lifetime) in UK and NZ.
I love the informality and my brain struggles a bit when I speak Lithuanian, esp when I know I should be using formal addressing, but I'm not sure I want to.
In Korean, you can never address someone older by their first name. Yes not even your blood brother or sister.
When I moved to the US it was a cultural shock to have people call me by my first name. But I got used to it quickly and now everything else seems awkward, especially since my last name is hard to pronounce.
And with french you also have Tu vs Vous.
I am almost at the halfway point of my life expectancy, and I do actually prefer people using my first name over my last name.
we've all seen https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-..., yeah?
Ah yes, the worst is Discord who always says "tu", who are you? do I know you? Did we herd geese together at some point :D ?
"I don't want to be your buddy, Rick. I just want a little breakfast."
Cultural imperialism.
The meaning was never there in the first place, you just were taught that it is there. Adapt.
That's literally all language.
All language is socially constructed. It's still annoying when people try to change the meanings of words.
In the USA as a low-level employee address the company CEO as "heya phil, hows it going?". Then address your friend with "Hello Mr. Smith". In most cases you won't get a positive reaction out of either one of those (yes exceptions exist).
How about this: address your husband/wife as "Mr/Mrs <lastname>", especially after a fight. Similarly when the kids have been doing something or you are frustrated with your partner say "your son did X".
Every language has explicit and implicit rules for expressing honor, respect, and closeness. Informal systems can vary more often and be more fluid but they always exist.
According to a popular quote, "Languages differ essentially in what they must convey, not in what they may convey."
You can convey relative social position in English, if you want to. You don't have to, if you don't want to.
Korean is different. You have to convey relative social position in basically every sentence because without that you can't finish your main verb.
In English, you can't offend a reasonable person by saying "I heard it's getting hotter today!" or "How big was the pizza?" In Korean, you can. Because there's no socially neutral version of "How big was the pizza" you can use to everyone.
* Well, you may think it's an absurdly cumbersome grammatical system, and in some situations it really is, but generally you get used to, just like English speakers are used to having to know and specify the gender of everyone around them, including cats and dogs, and it generally doesn't cause issues - but then sometimes it does!
> Korean is different. You have to convey relative social position in basically every sentence because without that you can't finish your main verb.
Sure, by the currently recorded official rules of the grammar.
If young Koreans just stop doing it then it will disappear within a decade or two - something only crusty old people bother with. Not that I have any say in such things.
I find the process fascinating though. I like to imagine what English was like when grammatical cases were being dropped from the language. Who decided to drop them and why? Kids being funny? People from different regions having difficulty understanding accents or vowel changes? What would someone at age 50, having used cases their entire life, think about everyone from London or everyone under 20 (or whatever cohort popularized it) when they just said all the words "wrong"? And when chided for speaking incorrectly just shrugged their shoulders and continued doing it?
On the other hand despite everyone agreeing that English spelling royally sucks... no one cares to make major changes to it. Even when writing informally in text messages or whatever. We all just keep going along with the system.
I also wonder how much computers are affecting us. Auto-correction may end up killing some forms of change to language over time. If GUIs and better input methods hadn't been invented so quickly would latin-based languages drop diacritics or consolidate some letter forms? Would languages like Japanese or Chinese have adopted Korean-like writing systems for convenience? Who knows. English dropped some letters because printing press letter sets came from Europe and didn't have those oddball letters. Who knows what technology might have triggered or prevented.
> just like English speakers are used to having to know and specify the gender of everyone around them, including cats and dogs
Welp, you have no idea. In German and in Slavic languages you'd have to know and specify the gender of every single noun. Is a coat the same gender as a beer, or different? Is orange the same gender as capitalism? Every. Single. Noun.
And they have three genders, obviously.
A few years back I had a long back and forth (and productive) email exchange with an older engineer (in his 50s, like I was at the time) on a matter of a particular old computer. He lives in a former soviet state. At some point he mentioned job prospects in his country are limited and was willing to relocate. He had excellent English and as a fellow nerd who loves getting into the low level details, I thought he might be a fit at my large & successful US-based company that has offices all over the world. I said I'd be happy to forward his resume to my employer.
A few weeks later HR contacted me: Uh, that was really painfully awkward. The HR person had called to phone screen him and called him "Vlad" or whatever in greeting. The prospective employee went on a rant and said he had never been so disrespected, and it made a terrible impression of how unprofessional my company was by being so cavalier by using his first name.
Needless to say that was the end of the interview process, and I never heard from the guy again. Even if he was a technical fit, the cultural fit was off the charts wrong.
> The HR person had called to phone screen him and called him "Vlad" or whatever in greeting.
Is that measurably worse than the current new normal? Call him Mr. Vladsky, tell him he's a great fit and schedule an interview, then block his number and email and never contact him again.
That's preferable to running the gauntlet of six+ interviews because they can't make a decision after two.
HR at multi-national not aware of culture. Is that ironic?
It's normal - at least for the big US companies, even with a large presence the culture is highly American. I remember when a VP of APAC sent a org email expressing strong feelings about the Black Lives Matter protests, and it was quite awkward since that wasn't really an issue discussed outside the US - he couldn't even understand how it couldn't be an issue for everyone.
Getting to hit the culture filter very early in interviews is probably a better outcome than ending up at the company and feeling awkward, not sure how intentional that is though.
> about the Black Lives Matter protests, and it was quite awkward since that wasn't really an issue discussed outside the US
Maybe outside of NATO. In EU we knew more about Black Lives Matter protests than about local news.
As every EU country could be practically the 51st state, we know any US news better than our own local news.
[dead]
I could be off-base here because I've been in tech too long but my understanding was that addressing people formally as Mr/Mrs/Ms has been outmoded in business virtually everywhere except in legal matters and (sometimes) when you work for a company and are speaking directly to one of your customers.
Everywhere I've been and observed, it's always been, "Good Morning, <firstname>" or similar regardless of who is talking to who on the org chart. (This doesn't mean you should talk like a surfer dude, of course.)
Agreed, this isn't a US or English only thing.
There are other languages that make this distinction. French. German. Just as other examples.
But as soon as you're past the interview, with your regular colleagues you're not gonna be on a "vous" or "Sie" basis. Maybe with your boss' boss or something, sure. Well maybe also with your boss if he's a dang stickler.
And it's been like that for well over 40 years.
I am not sure about that. I am a low level employee and I address the CEO and the occasional board member I meet on a first name basis.
I grew up in Texas with its culture of sir and ma’am. After leaving the military, I make it a point to address everyone on a first name basis. Doctor Dan. Father Frank. Nurse Nancy.
On the other hand, old habits are hard to shake. When someone is extra nice to me, I often address them as sir and ma’am even when I am much older than they are. I also get irritated when a young salesman addresses me by my first name and attempts to upsell me.
I put "exceptions exist" in my original post because I knew the pedants would jump on me with their individual anecdotes :)
The trouble with informal systems (which is how I personally classify English) is that practices and expectations vary a lot across every context you can imagine. It can vary between regions. Between demographic groups (eg age). On and on.
I suppose that isn't a surprise. Language is always evolving. Perhaps we are still in a transition phase (in US English) and haven't really settled on a new set of rules yet. See what some other replies have noted about using formal addresses vs first names in business scenarios.
FWIW this is hardly the first time. At one point ge (pronounced yee) was the informal pronoun, you the formal one. Saying "you" to your mates or lover would be extremely rude, implying distance. But you might use it if you were mad at them. But then it became a fad (probably among the kids) to use the formal pronoun. That eventually led to the loss of the informal pronoun entirely. I like to imagine kids and teens running around addressing everyone as "your majesty" ironically - because you can't call them out for being polite and formal even if that polite formality was opposite in intention. Being a smartass is a time-honored tradition :)
I actually think "heya phil" is more the norm than not. Certainly in tech that's the case. For example, we address the CEO of the company I work at (small but public) by her first name. From tuning into investor calls from my days in finance it's even common at non-tech companies.
Small tech firms are notorious outliers when it comes to this though
Can attest, I work at a fortune 500 and have addressed c-suite-2 by their first names, also seen the CEO adressed by his first name in Q&As by commom employees.
Your point is well-taken, but I've addressed two CEOs (that you might have heard) of by their first names, one named "Bill" and another one named "Steve". I still had a job for years after. But I was so low-level, they probably didn't even know who to fire.
Smaller companies, OTOH, have proven to be a bit hit-or-miss.
Gotta love when you're in a 2,000 person public company, and you can still "heya Phil" despite not being a personal friend at all, and he even prefers it
Unless you work for Conan O'Brien.
A fan saw him and briefly chatted, then Conan asked if he wanted a photo.
The man said "sure, Mr. O'Brien," to which Conan replied, "please, call me sir."
Coming from a comedian, is there any possibility that was a joke?
Great question, I'm glad you asked!
Surely they can't both exhibit Poe's law!
It absolutely was. He likes playing the pompous buffoon. He will also ask you to call him Dr O'Brien or Admiral O'Brien.
He’s made that joke a few times. It’s taking the respect implied in calling him Mr. O’Brien and turning the regular “you can just call me Conan” into something that is humorously asking the person for something more respectful.
Or try calling someone "buddy" with an annoyed tone.
I don't use titles. If you expect me to, you'll be disappointed.
This article does not address another layer that makes the Korean age system complicated: the "빠른" system. It refers to people born in January or February who, due to the school cutoff being in March, often enter school a year early and socially identify with those born in the previous calendar year.
For example, if I'm "빠른95", which indicates that I was born in 1995 between January and the end of February, I get to befriend and hang out with the ones born in 1994.
(Please note that Koreans typically make friends within the same narrow age band.)
No disrespect to Korean people, but as an outsider, this kind of gymnastics for establishing a time point for something seems really absurd to me.
As a native Korean speaker who has used this language for more than two good decades with Koreans, I'd count this as the primary reason why I love hanging out with English and Chinese speakers these days.
The language barrier between two Korean strangers (irony) is much thicker than when I talk to a passerby in English or Chinese asking for directions.
> Please note that Koreans typically make friends within the same narrow age band.
Everyone does to some degree or another. For example, Americans do this through middle school. It's not really until high school where you start mingling with other grades.
That's very interesting, thanks for mentioning it! I didn't know about that, hence I didn't include it. But it makes sense, I have sometimes noticed people asking whether the other was born early or late into the year, and change their standing based on that, but didn't know that that could have been because of the "빠른" system.
Being a 빠른 can put you in a slightly sticky situation, especially when combined with the strict hierarchy rules regarding honorifics (존댓말).
Typically, throughout middle school to university days, a South Korean individual is expected to use the honorific version of the language when speaking to someone older. This version involves a completely different set of vocabulary and grammar, used to show "respect to others" and sound "polite," effectively preventing one from being casual with others. Whereas a 빠른 is allowed to befriend people one year above their age and gets to use "반말" (the casual version of the language) with those peers.
A social complication can arise when two groups with a monotonic increase in age meet. Say, friend group A comprises a regular 95 and a 빠른 95. They became friends in high school and talk casually. Then there's group B, which consists of a regular 95 and a 빠른 96, who also became friends in high school. Now, when groups A and B start hanging out together at university, the 빠른 95 has to decide whether to use honorific or casual speech with the regular 95 and the 빠른 96.
The ones stuck in the middle, in this case the 빠른95, gets called "족보 브레이커", which roughly translates to "pedigree breaker".
Just so you know, the system has been adjusted a while ago so that new 빠른 no longer occur.
And it wouldn't matter anyway; the changes from the top are already having their effect, elementary school kids are starting to consistently use 만 나이 with each other.
this is a thing in the us as well—- tho the cutoff is august or september normally. there’s no name for it, but it’s real.
and american kids are also way more like to make friends in their school peer age group. i believe this is almost a universal truth for the first world
Absolutely true in elementary/middle school, and even a bit in the early parts of high school and college (upperclassmen don't want anything to do with "freshmen"), but in the adult world, I don't think age gaps of 5+ years between friends are uncommon at all.
Japanese also has a number of social systems and expectations that can be tricky to navigate as an outsider.
When I was younger and studying Japanese I used to play a popular Japanese MMORPG. It was popular among middle aged individuals (25-50).
I was lucky enough to meet a Japanese clan leader that invited me into one of the largest clans in the game. Fast forward a year or so-- and a new player joined the clan.
One day the new player flipped out on me in our clan chat. Our clan leaders told her I wasn't Japanese and to cut me some slack. She refused to believe I was a foreigner.
On the one hand I was proud. My Japanese was good enough for someone to think I wasn't a foreigner. On the other hand I was sad, I clearly did something wrong.
The clan leader spoke to me in a 1:1 fashion and tried to explain. It wasn't the language I used, but more or less how I interacted with the more senior clan members. I would often suggest things we could do or ask if they wanted to do something. In reality, it was expected to do small talk and wait for senior clan members to suggest something to do. I was crossing some social boundary...
> I would often suggest things we could do or ask if they wanted to do something. In reality, it was expected to do small talk and wait for senior clan members to suggest something to do. I was crossing some social boundary...
I know that this sort of shit happens in corporations and the government, but the idea that it crosses over into even multiplayer games makes me reconsider if I really want to ever visit Japan...
As an obvious foreigner, you are 100% exempt from all this. In fact, if you get it right, it'll make them feel weird and they'll try to avoid that.
I read a story once about someone who went to McDonalds in Japanese, and the clerk flipped the menu to the English side. The person flipped it back over, and the clerk flipped it to English again! They simply couldn't believe the foreigner could read it.
And I've read stories of people who didn't act like a "gaijin" (foreigner) and people didn't know how to interact with them, and the person finally just accepted it and acted like they expected a gaijin to act, and then everything was fine.
Seriously, just go. They were incredibly nice to us while we were there visiting.
> As an obvious foreigner, you are 100% exempt from all this. In fact, if you get it right, it'll make them feel weird and they'll try to avoid that.
Are you sure? In Korea, everyone who seriously cares about this stuff absolutely prefer it if you get all of it right. Of course, plenty of people (probably most under 30) secretly hate it and are therefore thankful if you don't get it right as it gives them a semi-out to be slightly more loose as well.
> I read a story once about someone who went to McDonalds in Japanese, and the clerk flipped the menu to the English side. The person flipped it back over, and the clerk flipped it to English again! They simply couldn't believe the foreigner could read it.
> And I've read stories of people who didn't act like a "gaijin" (foreigner) and people didn't know how to interact with them, and the person finally just accepted it and acted like they expected a gaijin to act, and then everything was fine.
Not trying to be rude but this pretty much tells me your first claim is likely wrong. Plenty of the exact same stories abound about Korea, especially online, yet they're both outdated and very cherry-picked. They're real, they happen (I've experienced them myself), but 99% of people would strongly prefer it if you were fluent in the language and followed every procedure as "normally" as possible.
They aren't going to live there. They're going as tourists.
If you want to live there, in standard apartments and jobs, then yes, people are going to be annoyed constantly by all the things you do 'wrong'.
But as a tourist or visitor of any kind, all those misdeeds are easily forgiven, and they can even enjoy the difference.
Japan and South Korea are different countries.
They are, but they have in common that a huge portion of things written about them online in English - especially about these cultural subjects - are very outdated or otherwise unrepresentative. Like I said, most of that comment is written all the time about SK too, and they're effectively untrue. There would need to be strong evidence that such reports about Japan are any different.
Social structures still exist in social situations. I don't really see what the alternative would be.
I found an interesting interview on youtube of someone who grew up in Japan and moved to Korea:
> What is your favorite thing about Korea?
> I find it comfortable that Koreans are honest about their thoughts.
> In the beginning I was hurt a lot and it was hard because of how honest Koreans are
> What do you think is the difference between Korea and Japan?
> First of all I think there is a difference in personality
> Since I was living in Japan, up until I was 18 years old, I had a typical Japanese personality
> Back then I couldn't speak my mind [...] and dancing was the only way I could express myself
> [...] and I also couldn't reject [someone/something]
> when my friends said we should do something, I always said yes
> after living in Korea, I felt a lot that I need to say what I want and don't want to do
Given that it's unacceptable to reject what a peer wants to do in Japan, I can see where making suggestions to a superior would cause problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPqqwrZqjK8
This is exactly what I ran into-- it's something you learn by experience/living through it. Unfortunately, no amount of text books can really prepare you for that.
It's weird. I knew thousands of kanji. I could conjugate like the best of them. I could read and discuss classic Japanese literature. I could read and explain classic Japanese grammar and the root of modern grammar.
What I couldn't do? A simple social situation.
It's not surprising at all because I guess as one would expect, schoolyard rules applies in a game, not company rules. Seniority is still going strong at school, perhaps since the age difference is low or because there is lower opportunity for merit-based respect.
At companies, basically everyone should be speaking polite Japanese regardless of seniority. Harassment has been a big deal and companies have gotten a lot stricter on it these past years, so at large corporations there will be far less of senior members talking down to low members as did happen before. One reason companies can change like this is at most, HR is a much stronger org than product, i.e. the ideal career path for a manager tends to be to move from product to HR, at least at the ones we wouldn't refer to as "tech companies".
SMBs will still feel quite old though since they don't have strong HR like the big companies. I don't know much about government but do have the impression that they would also still have these issues. But I think corporate Japan has gotten a lot better than you might be thinking.
I co-run a guild in WoW right now on the anniversary server with >150 members.
It's people who play these games and almost any weirdness you can imagine that could exist in a person in real life gets brought into these games.
Often it's magnified because of the pseudo anonymity. We've only been "big" for a few months and a handful of things we've already ran into would make you not want to visit several western hemisphere countries if held to the same standard. :)
As a Brazilian kid I played WoW with an American guild. One day people were doing some trash talking and I threw the line "it is all Obama fault" thinking it was funny because I often heard that from TV due to all the political drama in the US at the time. The conversation wasn't about politics at all.
My guild leader pulled me aside and seriously said to not bring politics into it haha. My first big culture shock of my life.
In Brazil it is quite common (at the time at least) to just blame the government for everything, no matter who is in government.
The second was that apparently wearing speedos is not socially acceptable in most a lot of the first world beaches anymore.
Big clans are basically companies with hierarchical power structure.
Koreans have some "hacks" to get around this (age-based) social hierarchy:
1. Some workplaces use English names (and even English language) so co-workers can speak/refer to each other without using the social hierarchy constructs built into the Korean language.
2. Social (partnered) dance clubs go by nicknames for the same reason. Even though I dance with them on a regular basis, I don't know most of my dance friends' real names. I'm not aware of any other country where dancers do this.
> Some workplaces use English names (and even English language) so co-workers can speak/refer to each other without using the social hierarchy constructs built into the Korean language.
That's so interesting. It reminds me very vaguely of Indians escaping the caste hierarchy by converting to Islam or Buddhism. Sometimes the easiest way out of a restrictive system in your culture is just to switch cultural contexts entirely.
Kakao ended the English names a year or so ago due to inevitable confusion, but now people are supposed to add the "nim" (dear) suffix to each other's Korean names instead, which sounds creepy.
The funny part of the Kakao CEO asking to be called Brian is that there was a K-drama (Search WWW) with a fictional tech company, but they also made the CEO name Brian. I suspect if this idea had gone on every CEO would be called Brian.
Never heard someone saying 님 sounds creepy, it's very commonplace in tech companies, Kakao was far from the first to introduce this. I've worked at a place where everyone was ..님 and no one cared.
yeah i agree with being even with coworkers but calling them with english name sounds seriously cringe. I do not prefer.
> 1. Some workplaces use English names (and even English language) so co-workers can speak/refer to each other without using the social hierarchy constructs built into the Korean language.
This is intended but didn't work as such, because wording only constitutes a small part of the whole social hierarchy.
This "high power distance" culture contributed to several airline crashes in the 80s and 90s because people under the captain wouldn't dare to question the captain's decisions.
One in particular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801
Malcolm Campbell popularized this theory. It's not entirely without merit but as ever the reality is more nuanced. NTSB:
> The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the captain's failure to adequately brief and execute the non-precision approach and the first officer's and flight engineer's failure to effectively monitor and cross-check the captain's execution of the approach. Contributing to these failures were the captain's fatigue and Korean Air's inadequate flight crew training. Contributing to the accident was the Federal Aviation Administration's intentional inhibition of the minimum safe altitude warning system at Guam and the agency's failure to adequately manage the system.
*Gladwell - Malcolm Campbell died long ago
This has been a pretty common reason for accidents all over the world. It's one of the most important reason CRM (Crew Resource Management) has been so instrumental at preventing accidents in aviation.
CRM is basically a system of cockpit communication and coordination techniques developed to prevent accidents caused by poor teamwork or hierarchical barriers between pilots - like requiring pilots to ask for input from co-pilots in difficult situations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management
Assuming the "power distance" is pre-existing - I find honorifics make it much easier to challenge someone in authority. If you start with a Mr/Mrs Blah or Professor Blah and then present critcism.. it typically comes off better. B/c you are showing you're not too chummy and you're strongly implying you respect them (at least somewhat).
Ex: You're in a lecture and you tell your professor "Professor X, I think on slide 10 there is a mistake". This comes off much better than "Hey Bob, I think there is a mistake on slide 10"
So at least personally, if appropriate, I default to using honorifics b/c it makes people feel better. (Unless they for some reason want to be seen as your peer - which does happen rarely)
Yeah in my personal experience I like honorifics for the same reason. Not possible in English but in the other languages I know I make it a point to address everyone (except family and friends) with the higher honorific. Especially restaurant staff or other service workers. Sometimes I wish English had an easy way for me to convey "I respect you" as subtext.
>Sometimes I wish English had an easy way for me to convey "I respect you" as subtext.
I find that sir/ma'am plus politeness (please, thank you, etc.) works nicely.
While there is the chance that you might misgender someone with that, that's not very common (at least for me) as long as you, you know, pay attention.
That said unless they have a note tattooed on their forehead with their preferred term of address, I can only use non-language cues to determine the appropriate term.
On the rare occasions where I use the wrong term and am corrected, I am fastidious in adhering to the requested term(s).
None of that's is rocket surgery, just simple respect for other humans IMHO.
That sounds like pop science. I find it funny culture is used to describe why things fail in Asia, but when things fail in the West, it’s because of that individual person‘s actions.
Kind of makes sense when you think about it, since if the person is describing it in English at least there's a good chance they are from the West.
Relevant:
Nathan Fielder's show "The Rehearsal" on HBO recently released season 2, the entire season is about airline cockpit dynamics between the first officer and the pilot.
Also: PIA 8303 https://www.dailyo.in/variety/pakistan-flight-crash-pia-flig...
BTW, the magnificent Admiral Cloudberg has an article on this one:
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/insanity-in-the-air-the-...
As a young man many years ago I happened to be in Seoul, in a shoe store. I was casually asking prices in English and noticed the salesman or owner was getting visibly angry with me. So much so that as I went around the corner of the store I clearly saw that he had begun advancing toward me, with every intention of physically attacking me. I put my hand forward to stop him and as I did, I shouted loudly, again in English, "Stop. Let me outta here!" To which he suddenly hesitated, stepped aside and let me go.
I wondered for years what I might have done to upset the bloke - he was a well built man and I did not want to fight him! It was only after the KAL crash and the coverage it gave the Korean focus on seniority and age that the penny dropped. He thought I was Korean - I do look very Korean (and Japanese and Chinese) - and was clearly offended by my not respecting his age.
At least that is what I would like to think. The alternative is that I was somehow very offensive anyway and I'd like not to think that.
In Germany I never had someone go to those lengths, but I've once made someone visible irritated when I used "du" instead of the more formal "Sie".
Of course I didn't notice but a friend just clued me into it right after.
Thing is, in Berlin nobody really cares I guess, but this time I was in the country... oooooops...
Interesting. In Germany I've always had the opposite issue of my superiors vastly preferring I used "du" for them instead of "sie". I've always had some trouble with that since in Russia you usually try to address senior employees, your teachers and professors formally, although tech companies are as usual a big exception.
Many people were quite unhappy when I kept slipping up and being too formal with them afterwards... :)
That must've been quite some time ago.
With multiple areas with >50% migrants you can count yourself lucky if ppl even speak German fluently enough to hold a conversation.
And the last holdouts that are still mostly natives are usually in the countryside... And the du/Sie rule has always been an urban convention.
Personally, I think your friend just noticed the phrasing and made an issue out of nothing
Umm... I'm not sure I follow. You were casually asking prices in English and the shopowner jumped to the conclusion that you were trolling him by using English when you were fluent in Korean?
If it was around that time, most Koreans were not good at English, and it's not exactly hard to tell a native English speaker from a Korean who learned "I'm a boy, you are a girl" in middle school.
Sounds like the shopowner was just a jerk and was mad for some random reason.
It was in the early '90s, sometime before South Korea broke out as a dominant economic force. Yes, I'm convinced he thought I was a western educated Korean brat prancing around in his shop and was having none of it. Looking back, I still feel a sense of relief I didn't get beaten up.
I did some work (military) with a couple asian nations during a multinational exercise. It was all done in english. What blew them away was how our honorifics changes not just according to the established hierarchies but according to location, dress and who else was within earshot. I had a junior guy from an asian nation shadowing me. He was shocked when my officer and I addressed each other by first names/callsigns. What stressed my shadow was how twenty minutes later, in a different room with different people, we switched to formal ranks. What further blew his mind was my explanation that breaks from these casual informalities would be a silent message. For instance, if a friend addressed me in private by my formal rank, I would know that I was in trouble ... or that someone was listening. He thought our culture was the more complicated. His culture had rules that everyone knew and followed. Our culture had rules that everyone knew but nobody seemed to follow.
I met a Korean classmate while studying Chinese together in China. We really hit it off, and on our first date she unexpectedly asked how old I was. When I told her I was a couple of years older, she gently explained that we couldn’t be together. Well.. I couldn’t understand it, feelings were mutual, it was like we were meant for each other, and all that was thrown because of age difference, how stupid.
(2024) But also:
South Koreans become younger overnight after country scraps ‘Korean age’ (2 years ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36502797
The end of the tricky 'Korean age' (3 years ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33907571
It can also be considered rude to use the more formal style of speech when the social hierarchy dictates the informal style should be used.
The book Using Korean[1] gives a detailed explanation of how formal speech indicates social distance more than simple politeness:
> [존댓말] indicates a psychological distance between the speaker and the hearer... a couple in a romantic relationship who normally use an intimate casual style with each other will suddenly switch to a formal style after they fight, to demonstrate the distance they feel from each other.
From a related discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/Korean/comments/vcusut/comment/icj2...
[1]: https://books.google.co.kr/books?id=2ggVsnUCbiAC&lpg=PA17&pg...
That isn't about the social hierarchy, it's about the switch. If the couple would always use 존댓말 - which is not the norm nowadays but still a large enough minority that it's not weird - then obviously it'd be a switch to 반말 that would be shocking; in fact it would sound even worse to suddenly do so during a fight.
Damn, the last thing I need is my wife switching to formal language when she’s mad at me.
It's interesting that someone like a boss would be further away from you and not a friend, how would you talk to your boss that is also your friend?
I suppose it would depend on the exact people and circumstances: the "social distance" can be very subjective.
- The same situation with different people or the same people in a different situation may result in different speech levels.
- If an older person feels really close to a junior, they may even ask them to "lower their speech."
There was a documentary about a much older Korean working for a very young boss. This resulted in a conflict: age hierarchy vs role hierarchy. They both spoke to each other in the formal style.
And think about addressing a mix of people who are both above and below you in the hierarchy...
Korean age is a hack that helps ease the friction that all those rules of seniority and different speech levels impose on us.
It gives you an age bracket within which everyone is equal, once and for all, regardless of their exact date of birth. Your friend isn't suddenly going to speak down to you when he turns 7 and you're still 6, except perhaps as a joke. Both of you are 8 in Korean age, and will turn 9 at the exact same moment. This age bracket produces a stable peer group who can remain friends for life, regardless of when or where individuals went to school, got a job, or enlisted in the army -- all the other places where hierarchy can be imposed.
Of course, the year is also important for reasons of superstition. There are still some elderly people who ask for the (Chinese zodiac) animal associated with your year of birth, instead of the year itself.
From the perspective of national and social development, this is definitely a dross culture. This system similar to hierarchy seemingly increases the courtesy among people. However, it more often leads to age bullying, blind obedience to the elders, and hinders resistance and innovation.
Influenced by Confucian culture, China doesn't have such a perverted etiquette system at all.
Typical cultural superiority bias.
Every way has its pros and cons. Having an age related hierarchy might have benefits like societal coherence or stability. I am not a proponent of it, I just acknowledge my inability to fully grasp the impact and ramifications as to label one as superior and the other as "perverted".
>benefits like societal coherence or stability
The situation looks exactly the opposite if you look at the birth rate in the Korea.
I obviously did not mean numerical stability.
In the modern day, Korean culture is absolutely cooked. There is a reason their birth rates are so terrible. Talking to Koreans and consuming even just a little bit of media about Korea makes some of the problems pretty obvious.
If you think hierarchy is natural and good you're a conservative or some other kind of reactionary.
Hierarchies invite revolt and need a lot of force to keep in place.
I did not talk about natural, I did not talk about good.
If you think there are no hierarchies everywhere, then we have a completely different worldview.
It’s sounds like we’re running into the is/ought problem - just because there is hierarchy doesn’t mean that’s the way it ought to be.
[flagged]
I will point you again to the usage of the word "perverted", which you missed twice.
Additionally the bias I pointed out is highly relevant to the discussion and therefore my argument is not an ad hominem. I can wait for you to calm down if you'd like, so your next reply is less emotionally charged. (that one was.)
I find it really interesting how much weight that simple question "What year were you born?" carries in Korean social life. A Korean friend once told me that it’s not about prying into your private life, it’s about figuring out how to talk to you and what to call you.
It also made me realize that a lot of the small social details we take for granted might seem really jarring or even rude in another culture.
I'm surprised they ask for the year directly. My impression is that in China, if you want to know someone's age, you ask for the animal of their birth year. That gives you the year mod 12, which you're expected to be able to resolve to a particular year yourself.
I've read that it's considered perfectly OK to ask someone's salary in China, so it's interesting that asking a person's birth year would be sensitive.
Sort of like horses.
https://horseracingsense.com/why-thoroughbred-racehorses-sam...
Thanks for sharing, never knew how much Koreans and horses have in common.
A friend (not Korean) said on his 29th birthday that he's starting his 30th year of life. It was an interesting perspective, because in general we celebrate our nth birthday after completing n years of life.
According to a traditional East Asian world view, your life is influenced by the powers that govern each unit of time -- hour, day, month, year -- that you pass through.
Under this system, the number of distinct powers that you were influenced by is more important than the exact number of days or years that you spent on this planet. Korean culture is still saturated with this stuff. You can DM a shaman your date of birth, and they'll use this kind of system to tell your fortunes.
Seventh hour is everything between 6:01 and 6:59, yes.
Yes.
That is why half open sets, half open intervals, are convenient.
If a bus leaves every 10 minutes starting at 1 PM, how many buses leave per hour ? Do we include the 2PM bus in the first hour ?
It helps to cover the space by non-overlapping equal intervals.
Shows up in 0 indexed for loops as well i < n
Everything between 6 and 7, right? ;)
> in general we celebrate our nth birthday after completing n years of life.
Well it's literally like you say: your friend will "celebrate his 30th birthday after completing 30 years of life". If the 30th birthday happens after 30 years of life, then the 30th year of life happens before the 30th birthday.
Well my day of birth isn't my 1st birthday ... it is somewhat messed up.
Starting from one is more accurate in a pedantic kind of way if you're counting how long you've been alive. Since the average human pregnancy is about 40 weeks.
Personally I prefer to round 29 years 6 months up to «I’m now 30 years old». As you would expect to happen if you run round(29.5). For some reason, most cultures settled on either floor(age) or ceil(age).
Which cultures settled on ceil(age)?
The traditional system in China and its surroundings, 虛歲, is that you're born at the age of 1 and your age increases on the new year.
As the sibling comment mentioned, I was thinking of East Asian countries.
There's another difference in that age++ there happens on Chinese New Year and not your own birthday, but that's an orthogonal point to the rounding, I think.
Funny how your birth day is not a birthday
It's definitely a birthday, hence the name. It's the day you turn 0.
It's a definition that could add 1 to everyone's birthday celebrations. A baby born on the 15th of June 2024 could be celebrating its 2nd birth day in a few days. Or well the family would. They'd celebrate the birth, and why not count that as a "birthday celebration".. Ha.
Curiously I guess most of us celebrate the number of years completed.
They would be celebrating their first anniversary.
This pops a lot with annual celebrations. I attended a commencement for my niece several years ago, and a speaker referred to it as the 100th annual commencement while a brochure referred to it as the 100th anniversary. Pick one.
You wouldn't remember the party anyway
Same with 12 months after birth
A not dissimilar age thing I've found interesting is from India: it is (or can be? Big country) typical to age yourself by the year of life you're in, i.e. 1-based rather than 0-based, basically.
On his birthday my grandfather in law said 'I am x years old! [...] Oh, no, x-1 complete.'
It's funny these kinds of arbitrary systems for things we have, and never question, until you suddenly stumble into one that's slightly different.
I've been told the one reason why Japanese is so hard to learn is because there is an underlying etiquette and social hierarchy built into the language and it is not simply being able to understand and speak the words.
Native speakers tolerate errors when it's obvious someone is non-native, but become offended when they speak it perfectly, but screw up the social heirarchy, so it's extremely hard to progress beyond a certain point.
Heh that’s overstated. As a non Asian foreigner*, you get a lot of leeway for making mistakes when speaking Japanese, as it is somehow ingrained in the subconscious here that Japanese is very special and very complicated and a foreigner trying to speak it is already doing something near impossible.
If your Japanese is near flawless except for the honorific register that would strike people as weird, but then what did you do to end up speaking flawless Japanese without ever properly internalizing honorific Japanese?
*(If you are an Asian foreigner, you are subject to many other layers of prejudice unrelated to your language ability)
My grandmother spent a lot of time in Japan, and she reported that everyone was very accommodating initially, but that over time the expectation developed that after being there for so long she should have learned the correct way to behave.
Yes, but that’s more about manners and being part of a community than language skills. You can speak shit Japanese and still be involved with your local community and be accepted and appreciated, for sure.
The fact that all Koreans that were born in the same year become of a legal age to drink on the same day, probably creates some cool memories if you drink responsibly
Korea has a binge drinking culture where adolescents frequently peer pressure each other to drink more.
Alcohol consumption in Korea among young adults has cratered over the last 10 years.
Drinking responsibly is uncool by definition when you are that age.
Yeah yeah I agree, it’s sometimes fun to go crazy in that age. I meant drinking responsibly in the broadest way possible
'Oh, no thanks! I am good with one beer!'
It does, on NYE there's huge groups of kids around going out for the first time.
I despise the social construct that ties respect to age. As someone who’s biologically Japanese—and coming from a culture that shares similar values with Korean society in this regard—I often find it frustrating when dealing with other Japanese people.
Some individuals will ask your age just so they can justify talking down to you. I’ve even had cases where someone was polite at first, but the moment they realized they were older, their behavior shifted entirely. That kind of attitude is a major pet peeve of mine—it honestly makes me want to pull my hair out.
While the younger generation tends to care less about age differences among peers (and thankfully avoids this behavior), there are still far too many people who believe age alone gives them the right to act superior or pretend they know better.
I strongly believe respect should be earned based on character, not age. I make a point to be polite to everyone, regardless of how old they are—and that’s why I don’t even bother asking.
Nowadays it seems more of a coping mechanism for fading relevance rather than respecting the actual competence.
I'm a person of European descent married to a person of Korean descent. Her mother's age has always been a question mark. As she aged and her memory became less reliable, it became even moreso. Nevermind not being entirely certain of her actual birthday...
How does this generally work with romantic relationships? Do people usually only start relationships if they are of the same age?
Typically the girl will pretend the guy to be older, if that isn't the case. That's why girls in movies and K-Pop groups always shout "Oppa!".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwmSjveL3Lc
And you might remember the Oppa that is Gangnam Style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0
> And you might remember the Oppa that is Gangnam Style:
My cultural awareness, which is distinctly non-Asian, assumed that this "Oppa" had something to do with horses.
What a brilliant comment :) I'm not sure if you're joking, but it certainly brightened up my day.
That Gangnam Style song is about riding and the associated up and down motion, just not related to horses. In that scene where he's watching the horses, he's singing:
"A true lady who is warm and human during the day, who is classy and knows how to enjoy a cup of coffee. But when night comes, her heart gets hot..." and then you see the horse moving its head up and down and he sings: "A lady who is kinky in that way"
And then you see him with 2 girls in his arms and he's using rather suggestive language:
"A man who one-shots ... his coffee. A man who won't let things cool down ... A man who bursts when night comes ... his heart. A man with few muscles and he is bulging ... with ideas."
Also, if you pay attention to it, you can hear that both gangnam songs are littered with audio samples of him and her moaning, e.g:
https://youtu.be/9bZkp7q19f0?feature=shared&t=151
https://youtu.be/wcLNteez3c4?feature=shared&t=68
And then there's the famous elevator scene where his lyrics are: "A good woman appears calm, but knows how to have fun. She's reasonable and when it's the right time, she will let her hair down ..."
https://youtu.be/9bZkp7q19f0?feature=shared&t=114
Aha, (literal) llol. That's interesting.
I am realizing now, that with no research or even conscious thought, I had settled on the idea that the song was some goofy Korean dude making a statement about the absurdity of late-stage capitalist sexualized excess, perhaps metaphorically asking who really is the horse and who really is the rider. And how we're all simultaneously instigator, enabler, beneficiary, and victim of same.
I can go a few directions from here...
I don't know what to believe, but please be gentle with me and understand that I was raised in a culture where Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, and Creedence Clearwater Revival are used as patriotic anthems at political rallies. Nothing is required to make sense.Actually I just noticed that for the first time today! I was reading a Korean webtoon in French and the translator didn't translate "Oppa" but rather kept it in and explained it in a translator's note.
My entire social circle is Korean and I've never seen a same-age couple (or one where the girl is older) use 오빠.
'Using “you” in Korean is quite interesting since the direct translation 너 / neo is often too rude'
This is most likely an equivalent to thee/thou which was considered rude to use for one's superiors or elders as in:
"Don't tha "thee" me!" - it's ok for me to use for you but not t'other way round.
Now many believe thou/thee to be respectful because of the bible, where in fact it is used as familiarity.
Is it more or less beneficial to birth a Korean child on December 31 so they can be two years in Korean Age ASAP? Thinking about their career prospects, certain legal requirements etc. if older is better, it seems like you’d want to hit that December 31st birth date.
Good job the Matrix wasn't set in Korea
Why?
I'm guessing because of "neo" being rude
Sadly for the dad joke, the eo in 너 "neo" is a single vowel that sounds more like English "u" or "o", as in Seoul.
This reminds me, it's actually very interesting how English movies get translated into Korean and vice versa, since the nuances mentioned in the article are hard to translate / convey in the other language.
In Tamatoa's musical number in Moana, he spontaneously breaks into French for a single line of his song, "c'est la vie, mon ami". This is not expected to cause problems for English-speaking audiences.
I thought it was interesting to see how foreign language dubs handled that line. Sometimes they translate the French into the dub language as if it had just been English like the rest of the song. Sometimes they leave it as French. I don't remember any that translate it into a language that isn't the language of the dub, but also isn't French.
(Of particular note, the French dub leaves the line as "untranslated" French.)
Something that feels similar to me is the treatment of the Italian brothers in Lady and the Tramp. In the English original, they are jovial immigrants from Italy who operate an Italian restaurant and speak English in a very thick Italian accent.
This cultural concept translated better into some foreign languages than others. In the French dub, the brothers are jovial immigrants from Italy who operate an Italian restaurant and speak French in a very thick Italian accent.
In the Spanish-dubbed version of Fawlty Towers, Manuel is Italian instead of Spanish, and he's Mexican in the Catalan version. (https://archive.ph/9LX6t)
People always tell me that watching English dubbed anime isn't good because it loses the nuance of the Japanese language, in similar ways, though I don't speak/read Japanese so I'm either going to be listening to it in English or reading the subs in English. I know I'm going to be losing subtle nuance either way but I've never been good at learning languages
'Mr. Anderson', c'mon (when the big bad referring 'The one', 'Neo')
Movie with agent Smith as a good guy and a protagonist would be very amusing :)
This exists in all Uralic-Altaic languages; Turkish, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian and Tungus. It is build in the language/culure.
'Using “you” in Korean is quite interesting since the direct translation 너 / neo is often too rude.'
That makes me wonder how the preferred third person pronoun movement works in Korea...
It doesn't really exist because Korean pronouns don't have any gender attached to them.
That's the best solution, of course. Almost never does it clarify...
What would be the polite way to decline to answer the question? Is that even possible?
“I don’t give out that information (as a matter of principle/because my mother told me not to/because people close to me have been victims of identity theft/because I’m old enough to know better).” Or some variation thereof. It’s enough to say that you don’t because you choose not to, but some people will belabor the point until you give an answer that has the ring of finality and can communicate that it isn't a matter of debate, but a matter of conscience, or rationale, or whatever principle(s) guide you.
Or you could provide a joke answer that is absurdly high or low or wrong, like saying that you weren’t born yesterday, or that you were born at night, but not last night, or in the day, but not yesterday. This might work for those who you are closer with personally, but some may find this kind of answer dismissive and will persist or get upset. If in doubt, use the principle-based approach I mentioned above instead or in addition to the joke one, as a way of showing that you’re answering in good faith and take their question seriously as asked.
As far as I can tell, everything in this article applies to Japan as well.
It does not. Japan a hundred years ago maybe. Some of my Japanese colleagues were surprised when I mentioned this style of age counting in an old novel I was reading.
You're right and I think I got my misinformation from reading older novels too. Apparently, the law changed in 1902 and it broadly phased out in the 50s.
That used to be true about Japan using the "1 the day you're born" system, but now it's mostly only referenced to joke about kids trying to claim they're older than they really are.
In my hometown in China, same practice. However I find it not consistent for people from all over of China. When I get into a causal conversation about childhood with people from everywhere I had to do the conversion in my head (which school year what game came out e.g).
Those Korean kids born on December 31st must be the kings and queens of their peer group when they become eligible to buy alcohol two years ahead of the others!
As far as I understand, they would primarily be in the same peer group as all other people with their Korean age.
Not really because everyone starts at one, so at most it's one year younger those born on Jan 1st.
Also their peer group usually being people born the same year, everyone gets to drink at the exact same time (unlike in other countries where everyone reach drinking age at their birthday).
Most Vietnamese do the same things too.
Does the January 1st thing apply as well?
Koreans from Korea often do not follow this rule outside of the country. They basically use it whenever it benefits them. So in essence this aspect of the culture is pretty much…BS.
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