Can anyone tell me when ‘chi/chwi’ began to be used as a polite or deferential form of address instead of the second person singular ‘ti’? Just scanning an old copy of the Mabinogion, I can see ‘ti’ being used, and by the 1890s, Daniel Owen has his characters sometimes using ‘chi’ according to who his characters are. William Morgan, in his 1588 dedication to Queen Elizabeth I (in Latin), uses ‘Your Majesty’ and the third person, shortened to V.M. (interestingly like Spanish Vd.), so he didn’t address her directly. So does anyone know when ‘chi’ as a singular polite form popped up? So well before people’s grannies - I’m not asking about current usage. Diolch!
I don’t know the answer to your question, but it is perhaps interesting that several other languages make the polite/impolite distinction, for example French (tu/vous) and I suspect at least Spanish and Portuguese. All Romance languages. And Italian is a fun case: there’s “tu” “voi” and also “lei”. Lei is actually a third person singular, but is actually used currently as the polite “you”. I was told that the explanation was that using “voi” was identified with the Mussolini era - but note that it’s something I was told.
Could it be something to do with Wales being occupied by the Romans for quite a long time?
Also interesting that Irish doesn’t make the distinction - just singular/plural. So yes, perhaps a Roman/Norman rather than Celtic influence?
Does anybody know what happens in Scottish Gaelic or Cornish?
As did Old/Middle English. In the 19th century, it became popular to mimic Latin. So, people started simulating the formal/informal 2nd person. The result is English lost Thou completely. A tragic loss in my opinion.
Perhaps Welsh did the same to a degree. But fortunately, did not lose 2nd person singular.
I know that Breton, that’s the closest to Welsh as far as I know also has c’hwi as polite form.
But I don’t know since when.
In the territory that’s now Italy, in Roman times there was just “tu”, then also “voi”. i just checked when the Romans were in Wales and there was already the “voi” form so I guess an influence on the Welsh language is possible.
However if it’s not used in the Mabinogion or in Middle Welsh, I suppose it is more recent?
OT: “Lei” came later influenced by Spanish, which is why Mussolini abolished it in favour of “Voi”, like the Ancient Romans.
After the war “lei” came back and it is used in the centre and north.
“Voi” is used in the south, but from time to time also in the north with a slightly different nuance I think, but it’s a digression, so enough about that!
It’s actually more C16-17, I think. The King James Bible and Book of Common Prayer call God ‘thou’ and are resolutely only sg/pl (no plural of politeness) in their language, but I understood that that was slightly unusual and conservative for the period, because the KJV was heavily based on older translations that followed the older norm.
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Scots Gaelic systematically uses a plural of politeness, even for older family members - at least, if Duolingo is to be believed! (The course was written by Gaelic-speaking volunteers, so it should be.)
Ciamar a tha thu, Ealasaid? (How are you, Elizabeth?)
Ciamar a tha sibh, Ealasaid agus Anndra? (How are you, Elizabeth and Andrew?)
Ciamar a tha sibh, ollaimh? (…professor?)
Ciamar a tha sibh, athair? (…father?)
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You’re right, I’m getting my dates conflated. This was already happening during Shakespeare’s time.
Which pronouns did English use to mimick Latin?
As mentioned second person was strictly singular vs. plural (Thou/You). There was no formal vs. informal distinction. People started using You as polite singular because Latin had such a distinction in the second person.
So, in essence everyone stopped using Thou completely. It only took a couple of generations for Thou to disappear from usage.
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There’s a Wikipedia article on it, that basically says vos in place of tu started in Latin c C4th CE for addressing the emperor, possibly partly because there were two emperors (East & West) but, if so, rapidly becoming just a mark of respect. From there it spread down the social scale and into the vernacular, but it wasn’t clearly established in, say, Old French until about C12th. So it looks as if it’s probably Anglo-Norman French (and Latin) influence on English, Welsh and Scots Gaelic.
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That’s very detailed!
I was thinking of the “tu” only of earlier Latin. So dropping “thou” seemed like the exact opposite of that.
While later, it was always both “tu” and “voi”, and still is the same in Italian . Therefore like Welsh, and French, but not like English.
Another interesting (to me anyway) aside is Basque which historically had hi as the familiar ‘you’ and zu as the plural, but hi is now only used by some people between close friends or family members, and zu has become the familiar ‘you’ for everyone else, with a new pronoun zuek coming into existence to be the plural ‘you’.