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Originally Posted by Guinevere
Well, what is interesting is that beside the familiar "Du" Carroux used only "Ihr" - the archaic form of polite address; wheras Krege uses both "Ihr" and "Sie" - apparently to distinguish between the 20th century hobbits of the Shire and the archaic world of Middle-Earth.
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I get his motive for that to some degree, but still, this sounds horribly wrong to me in a fantasy setting. I think it would be palatable in an urban fantasy set in modern times, but in Tolkien, yuck.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guinevere
Btw, "Ihr" as a polite address is still in use today in the Swiss dialect of Kanton Bern.
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Not only there. I vividly remember my mother addressing her sister's elderly mother-in-law as "Ihr" in my early childhood (around 1970), because it struck me as archaic even then - but then, that was probably a rural as well as dialectal usage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guinevere
Complicated business!! it's so much easier calling everybody "You"!  |
But so much less fun with interlingual jokes. Wasn't it our former Bundespräsident Heinrich Lübke who addressed a visiting anglophone statesman with the immortal words "You can say you to me"?