I was thinking how this would work in Finnish, and in casual conversation it’d be Sinävok or more colloquially Sävok, but in formal conversation, it’d be Tevok, which was surprisingly close again…
Te = is equivalent to English “you”, but only in the sense of it being a plural", and “sinä/sä” is second person singular, equivalent to English “thee”. Nowadays “you” in English will be translated to “sinä” if the context is someone addressing a single person and “te” if they’re addressing more people. I believe the reason “thee” went out of favour was that it was polite to use “you” to address anyone you didn’t have a close relationship with. That’s the reason we use it in Finland as well. So in English the singular got restricted to close relationships and eventually died out except in some northern English dialects. Which hasn’t happened for us, probably because of the way we conjugate things and talking in plural is just a tad more cumbersome in certain contexts.
In spanish he is known as Ustedvok in formal situations.
Ah yes. I remember learning that on the old PBS show:
I was thinking how this would work in Finnish, and in casual conversation it’d be Sinävok or more colloquially Sävok, but in formal conversation, it’d be Tevok, which was surprisingly close again…
Te = is equivalent to English “you”, but only in the sense of it being a plural", and “sinä/sä” is second person singular, equivalent to English “thee”. Nowadays “you” in English will be translated to “sinä” if the context is someone addressing a single person and “te” if they’re addressing more people. I believe the reason “thee” went out of favour was that it was polite to use “you” to address anyone you didn’t have a close relationship with. That’s the reason we use it in Finland as well. So in English the singular got restricted to close relationships and eventually died out except in some northern English dialects. Which hasn’t happened for us, probably because of the way we conjugate things and talking in plural is just a tad more cumbersome in certain contexts.