It's really interesting to know, because really in North America you don't get exposed to a lot of languages other French or Spanish depending on which side of the border you live on. ;)
Japanese has three main levels of formality, which is facinating and confusing all at once. There's no equivalent to "sie/du", just "anata" - you, but anata is quite familiar/informal. Most people outside your immediate family or friends the name is used in place of "you", or "you" is just assumed depending on what you're saying.
Reading this language geekery discussion of course lead to me bugging my poor husband about Cantonese. She says it's more similar to English with just one form of 'You', though strangely there's different written forms of 'you' of different formalities.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: That's a Bingo on Languages. :-)
Date: 2009-12-19 03:01 am (UTC)It's really interesting to know, because really in North America you don't get exposed to a lot of languages other French or Spanish depending on which side of the border you live on. ;)
Japanese has three main levels of formality, which is facinating and confusing all at once. There's no equivalent to "sie/du", just "anata" - you, but anata is quite familiar/informal. Most people outside your immediate family or friends the name is used in place of "you", or "you" is just assumed depending on what you're saying.
Reading this language geekery discussion of course lead to me bugging my poor husband about Cantonese. She says it's more similar to English with just one form of 'You', though strangely there's different written forms of 'you' of different formalities.