KILO NOVEMBER
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,068
- Location
- Hurricane Coast Florida
This reminds me of a story a French teacher (that is, a teacher of the French language, not a teacher from France) from my high school told 50+ years ago. It seems there was a French man who had a servant of North African origin. This servant had limited French language skills and never learned "vous", only "tu". The employer was put out by the informality of address so he insisted on addressing the servant as "vous" in order to maintain a distinction.The "what do we like, today?" stuff is coming from the old-fashioned serving language, right? I remember, that this adressing was much more common in the 90s in our "province".
Since them, they seemingly teached them to act more professional, with the one exception of chain stores, which want to be anyhow "youthful" and now adressing customers with "Du", what was probably stared by Ikea.
If that happens, I "turn a deaf ear to it".
Yes, sometimes, I may look too young for my age, but if that would be the real reason, adressing with "Du" would happen much more and not especially in these chain stores.
Just for fun, I could test it in the same stores, beeing dressed much more "upscale"-looking to see if they switch to "Sie".
I don't know if English ever had such a class distinction in pronouns, but if it did, it disappeared long before the King James Bible.
My German extends to the difference between "sie" and "du", but not much further.