I guess an analog is tu in Hindi which I can never bring myself to use with domestic workers, sticking to the formal form. But we had one once who told me she felt I was alienating her by using the formal form (which I code as respect) and she wanted me to go with tu, which is the most familiar, and, analogous to calling someone di in Tamil, is also coded as wildly disrespectful and can be used to say "I have power over you". We settled on tum, the regular informal form
Cordially, Ameya Nagarajan (she/her) <http://www.linkedin.com/in/ameyann> On Wed, 29 May 2024 at 18:50, Udhay Shankar N via Silklist < [email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 6:26 PM Dave Long via Silklist < > [email protected]> wrote: > > > One of my chefy friends had a great rule about who she voluntarily eats >> food with - it is people she wouldn't mind exchanging bodily fluids with >> >> On the other side of this, I often have to decide, when relating >> anecdotes, whether to label someone a "friend" or a "colleague", and >> generally make that decision on the basis of "how often have we eaten >> together" (literal com-pan-ionship?). >> >> Less important is the question of using formal (V) or informal (T) second >> person pronouns. I generally[0] stick to V except with people I either >> interact with frequently or share meals with on the infrequent occasions >> we're in contact. >> > > In the South Indian context, a good filter would be "would you be OK with > this person using the informal second person to you?". For historical and > social reasons, this is an even better filter for women than men. In fact, > someone once told me "my best friends are those that call me 'di'" (which > is a second person familiar mode of address for a woman in Tamil). > > Amusingly, 'di' means approximately opposite things in Tamil (where it is > a term of great familiarity) and Hindi/other North Indian languages (where > it means "older sister" and hence a respectful form of address) > > Udhay > > -- > > ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) > > -- > Silklist mailing list > [email protected] > https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist >
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