This treatment of new recruits goes back thousands of years.
I live my life here in a language without pronouns. There is one for "I" (tôi) that is the default and at my age I am safe using it all the time but a child would almost never use it. As with Chinese, most "pronouns" are words like uncle, nephew, son, grandmother .... and ther…
This treatment of new recruits goes back thousands of years.
I live my life here in a language without pronouns. There is one for "I" (tôi) that is the default and at my age I am safe using it all the time but a child would almost never use it. As with Chinese, most "pronouns" are words like uncle, nephew, son, grandmother .... and there are others. I am called brother or grandfather. The generic "you" as in advertising is bạn, friend. One's own first name or nickname can be used as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person.
My teacher in the USA didn't know his own father's actual name until he was fourteen.
In Thai the word Pee is placed before an elder's name (older brother or sister) and Nung for younger brother or sister. It is not literally brother or sister; I am addressed as Pee Dave by people unrelated. Thanks to the more comfortable life my wife has lived in America she aged better than her sisters and people who don't know tend to call her younger sister pee saao and my wife noong saao, much to her sister's chagrin.
The language is full of words formed around relationships of age or status. Men always put the polite word krap at the end of a sentence. Women put khah. A sexual gender reference to themselves. Leaving that out is often considered rude, especially when speaking to someone who is not close in relationship rather than absurd like trying to make Spanish genderless with the word Latinx.
This is cool; I'm not surprised that relative age and status are part of the Thai language, this is so for every Asian language I know anything about. But the spoken period is news to me, like when I send a text message talking to my watch; "where are you question mark." "I'll call in an hour period."
I took a year of Cantonese before I learned Vietnamese, not very fluent in the former but I learned a lot of phrases and I can go to a Chinese restaurant and use the idiom that means I can eat real Chinese food and I am comfortable with chopsticks. But as with Russian and Italian, it's fading away.
Anyway I've seen Chinese who meet someone do a quick almost ritualistic exchange to establish how they address each other. Their faces go completely expressionless while they do it. I'm pretty sure Vietnamese do it too; in my case they ask my age, I answer "sáu mươi tám tuổi" 68 years old, and I get "ông," grandfather. Thanks a lot. Anyone younger can be "em" though I have some leeway there. It's all relative to your own age, not by the other's age as I used to think.
There are two words for uncle, depending on whether the other is older or younger than your father. Ho Chi Minh is Bác Hô, older uncle, not grandfather, more familial than maximal deference. It sounds complicated but it becomes second nature after a while.
I took a Vietnamese name long ago, I am Cao Thiên. My last name is Fox, con cáo*, so I dropped the tone mark and left it as Cao, which is a proper Vietnamese surname (there was a Republican congressman from Louisiana named Cao), which also means high, noble, or tall. Thiên means sky or heaven, so my name is "high heaven," as in "stinks to," a joke nobody here gets.
Most people call me Anh Thiên, brother Thiên. They would have trouble pronouncing my English name. I only use my English name on official documents.
*Con is a pseudo-pronoun (measure-word) for children or animals and every type of animal is called con. A cat is con mèo, a kitten is mèo con. Con cáo is a fox, and the word has a suggestion of deviousness.
My name, David, as you would know means beloved. In Thai, teelak, often translated to English as sweetheart. Years ago, that got lots of laughs since the most common usage is a reference to your girlfriend. ;0)
This treatment of new recruits goes back thousands of years.
I live my life here in a language without pronouns. There is one for "I" (tôi) that is the default and at my age I am safe using it all the time but a child would almost never use it. As with Chinese, most "pronouns" are words like uncle, nephew, son, grandmother .... and there are others. I am called brother or grandfather. The generic "you" as in advertising is bạn, friend. One's own first name or nickname can be used as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person.
My teacher in the USA didn't know his own father's actual name until he was fourteen.
In Thai the word Pee is placed before an elder's name (older brother or sister) and Nung for younger brother or sister. It is not literally brother or sister; I am addressed as Pee Dave by people unrelated. Thanks to the more comfortable life my wife has lived in America she aged better than her sisters and people who don't know tend to call her younger sister pee saao and my wife noong saao, much to her sister's chagrin.
The language is full of words formed around relationships of age or status. Men always put the polite word krap at the end of a sentence. Women put khah. A sexual gender reference to themselves. Leaving that out is often considered rude, especially when speaking to someone who is not close in relationship rather than absurd like trying to make Spanish genderless with the word Latinx.
This is cool; I'm not surprised that relative age and status are part of the Thai language, this is so for every Asian language I know anything about. But the spoken period is news to me, like when I send a text message talking to my watch; "where are you question mark." "I'll call in an hour period."
I took a year of Cantonese before I learned Vietnamese, not very fluent in the former but I learned a lot of phrases and I can go to a Chinese restaurant and use the idiom that means I can eat real Chinese food and I am comfortable with chopsticks. But as with Russian and Italian, it's fading away.
Anyway I've seen Chinese who meet someone do a quick almost ritualistic exchange to establish how they address each other. Their faces go completely expressionless while they do it. I'm pretty sure Vietnamese do it too; in my case they ask my age, I answer "sáu mươi tám tuổi" 68 years old, and I get "ông," grandfather. Thanks a lot. Anyone younger can be "em" though I have some leeway there. It's all relative to your own age, not by the other's age as I used to think.
There are two words for uncle, depending on whether the other is older or younger than your father. Ho Chi Minh is Bác Hô, older uncle, not grandfather, more familial than maximal deference. It sounds complicated but it becomes second nature after a while.
At a Vietnamese friend's home, he chastised a child for not addressing me as uncle.
You can get in a LOT of trouble not showing proper deference. What did the kid call you?
Dave (what Hoong calls me), rather than an acceptable uncle Dave. Hoong and I are close enough to dispense with that between the two of us.
I took a Vietnamese name long ago, I am Cao Thiên. My last name is Fox, con cáo*, so I dropped the tone mark and left it as Cao, which is a proper Vietnamese surname (there was a Republican congressman from Louisiana named Cao), which also means high, noble, or tall. Thiên means sky or heaven, so my name is "high heaven," as in "stinks to," a joke nobody here gets.
Most people call me Anh Thiên, brother Thiên. They would have trouble pronouncing my English name. I only use my English name on official documents.
*Con is a pseudo-pronoun (measure-word) for children or animals and every type of animal is called con. A cat is con mèo, a kitten is mèo con. Con cáo is a fox, and the word has a suggestion of deviousness.
My name, David, as you would know means beloved. In Thai, teelak, often translated to English as sweetheart. Years ago, that got lots of laughs since the most common usage is a reference to your girlfriend. ;0)