S’mae pawb - sorry if this is covered elsewhere, I’m not sure how to search for it given the words involved haha.
In several languages that preserve a T–V distinction, there’s a verb for “to T someone” (and perhaps less commonly a verb for “to V someone”). As an example, in Spanish you have tú/usted, and the verb tutear means “to call someone tú.” This could indicate familiarity, disrespect, or any number of other meanings.
In English the corollary would be “to thou someone,” though since the term is fairly archaic I’d be surprised if anyone’s ever said that.
In any case, is there an equivalent term in Cymraeg for ti/chi? Diolch yn fawr!
I’m not familiar with a dedicated verb yn Gymraeg.. whenever I had such situations, it was with an expression similar to “Is it okay if we call one another “ti”?”, or the other person saying “Plîs, paid â galw fi’n ‘chi’” after you called them chi.
There is a verb in the dictionary - tydïo, to ‘thou’ someone - but no-one uses it (not like tutear or tutoyer). I considered getting myself a T-shirt or a badge made that said Gei di fy nhydïo, but it’d be a bit niche.
One of my lecturers at university clearly felt that Sir Walter Raleigh had been railroaded at his trial. Apparently the prosecution had insisted on ‘thou-ing’ him, saying words to the effect of ‘I refuse to be polite to you because you’re a git,’ or, in the parlance of the time, ‘I thou thee, thou dastard.’ My lecturer was still upset about it.
Or there’s the Yorkshire warning about not getting above one’s station and assuming that familiarity is reciprocal, which is something like ‘Don’t tha tha them as thas thee.’
That question doesn’t really have an easy answer. It’s all about social expectations, and the surrounding situation is important, not that it is very likely to encounter such situations as a learner.. I can only extrapolate from what is customary in Germany, and if you use the familiar “du” with people like police officers or judges, you can get into trouble.
(But I would suppose that learners might get a bit more leeway)
A good rule of thumb is to start with chi if you are talking to a stranger and see how things go from there.
Well, I would default to chi generally on the safe side, but I remember when I was in Russia because I mostly used the t with friends, when I was talking to people I didn’t know I often stayed in that informal style because it just didn’t occur to me to switch. I am told that it can actually cause offence, but noone ever called me on it or did anything other than smile at me (though I never had to talk to a police officer or judge) .
I do hate geoblocking. As if being banned from Radio Cymru isn’t bad enough, us overseas enthousiasts are now also banned from getting the jokes as well ( )
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