In the Abrahamic religions, speak not politely to God.

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appletheclown
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11 Aug 2014, 7:49 am

buffinator wrote:
beneficii wrote:
We don't notice this in English, but I can notice it in Japanese.

Often, if a Japanese person addresses God/gods as 神様 (kamisama), which adds the very honorific suffix 様 (sama) to the word for God/gods 神 (kami), then they are probably not Jewish, Christian, or Muslim.

If, however, that person addresses God as 神よ (kami yo) with the よ (yo) suffix, which is a very direct, familiar way to address someone, then they probably are Jewish, Christian, or Muslim.

It's interesting that, in the Abrahamic religions, you are supposed to speak very plainly and directly to God and not waste your time with formalities or polite modes of speech.


I think that is because, as I understand it, the gods/spirits etc in Japanese faiths have their own motivations and personalities that must be catered to, thus they are more human-like. The abrahamic God is honored differently, but also sort of whored out as a minion to serve the whims of the follower: "god, please grant me victory in this game of scrabble," etc. Because God is infallible he is incapable of spite, and always just; the way in which one supplicated to God varies. Furthermore "God" isn't God's name, it is a pronoun, which makes it a little bit different. God has a/several names which are often considered too holy to utter or even write (which makes them not necessarily common knowledge).


God also doesn't require you to care what you call him.
"Hey Bob(God) I pray to you for a win in the great fried chicken contest today,
Please make the breading delicious and crunchy, amen."
Do you really think he cares about fried chicken? NO.
He is to busy protecting people like soldiers and missionaries, but occasionally rewards faith by answering stupid request like winning a fried chicken contest.
It says in the bible not to pray about stupid stuff anyways.
And we honor him by praying about more than just the most important stuff, as it shows that we rely on him.


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beneficii
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11 Aug 2014, 1:18 pm

Does anyone know of the prosecutor Sir Edward Coke who said to Sir Walter Raleigh, who was being brought up on treason charges, this: "I thou thee, thou traitor!"


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11 Aug 2014, 1:29 pm

God has many names in Islam, and there are many honorific expressions in use, like for example "Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala" (Allah may he be glorified and exalted) and the famous "Allāhu Akbar" (God is the greatest) ...etc.



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11 Aug 2014, 2:12 pm

beneficii wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
[?]

But by which pronoun do Christians in the rest of Europe, and in Latin America, address God ? The formal? Or the informal?

Do Spanish speakers address god as "tu" (informal), or as "usted" (formal)?

Does anyone know?

My guess that it would be "usted" because God "outranks" you, and you wanna sound humble when you ask for something from him.


See my last post. It's generally , not Usted.


In fact, when addressing God, is usually capitalized in religious texts. It?s still respectful?just a different kind of respect. Calling God Usted (this word isn?t normally capitalized, but I suppose it should be if it referred to God, too) would sound ridiculous to many Spanish speakers, if not all. It?d more or less imply He is a mere human. Besides, as an omnipresent being who created you, He is presumed to be your intimate.

trollcatman wrote:
I even found an Anglo-Saxon/Old English translation on wikipedia! (Ænglisc in their own language). It seems to use the informal version, although I'm certainly no expert on Anglo-Saxon: Web Page Name

I think the thu and thin are informal. It is somewhat similar to the modern German version (Dein).

Fæder ūre, þū þe eart on heofonum;
Sīe þīn nama gehālgod,
tō becume þīn rīce,
gewurþe þīn willa,
on eorðan swā swā on heofonum.
Ūrne gedæghwamlican hlāf sele ūs tōdæg,
and forgif ūs ūre gyltas,
swā swā wē forgifaþ ūrum gyltendum,
and ne gelǣd þū ūs on costnunge,
ac ālīes ūs of yfele, sōþlīce.


It isn?t necessarily informal. According to Wikipedia, þū was the only second-person singular personal pronoun in Old English. T-V distinction was only introduced into English with the Norman conquest.


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12 Aug 2014, 9:15 am

Spiderpig wrote:
trollcatman wrote:
I even found an Anglo-Saxon/Old English translation on wikipedia! (Ænglisc in their own language). It seems to use the informal version, although I'm certainly no expert on Anglo-Saxon: Web Page Name

I think the thu and thin are informal. It is somewhat similar to the modern German version (Dein).

Fæder ūre, þū þe eart on heofonum;
Sīe þīn nama gehālgod,
tō becume þīn rīce,
gewurþe þīn willa,
on eorðan swā swā on heofonum.
Ūrne gedæghwamlican hlāf sele ūs tōdæg,
and forgif ūs ūre gyltas,
swā swā wē forgifaþ ūrum gyltendum,
and ne gelǣd þū ūs on costnunge,
ac ālīes ūs of yfele, sōþlīce.


It isn?t necessarily informal. According to Wikipedia, þū was the only second-person singular personal pronoun in Old English. T-V distinction was only introduced into English with the Norman conquest.


Could you show me on what wikipedia page it says there is no T-V distinction? I'm curious. I just assumed that because it is so similar to German and Dutch that there would be a V form as well, since both those modern languages do.



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12 Aug 2014, 11:14 am

beneficii wrote:
We don't notice this in English, but I can notice it in Japanese.

Often, if a Japanese person addresses God/gods as 神様 (kamisama), which adds the very honorific suffix 様 (sama) to the word for God/gods 神 (kami), then they are probably not Jewish, Christian, or Muslim.

If, however, that person addresses God as 神よ (kami yo) with the よ (yo) suffix, which is a very direct, familiar way to address someone, then they probably are Jewish, Christian, or Muslim.

It's interesting that, in the Abrahamic religions, you are supposed to speak very plainly and directly to God and not waste your time with formalities or polite modes of speech.


There's a lot of dispute about "how" to pray. Why is it people are so arrogant they think it is up to them to tell others how to talk to God. No one has any right to do this imo. I have seen a lot about God lately and some people have gone off the deep end which convinces me more than ever your relationship with God is extremely personal and not anyone else's damn business!

So I would tell anyone trying to instruct to nose out and worry about your own praying.



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19 Aug 2014, 7:47 am

trollcatman wrote:
Could you show me on what wikipedia page it says there is no T-V distinction?


T-V distinction

Quote:
The Old English and Early Middle English second person pronouns thu and ye (with variants) were used for singular and plural reference respectively with no T-V distinction. The earliest entry in the Oxford English Dictionary for ye as a V pronoun in place of the singular thou exists in a Middle English text of 1225 composed in 1200. The usage may have started among the French nobility in imitation of French. It made noticeable advances during the second half of the thirteenth century.


In the section about English of the same article:

Quote:
Old English used þū in the second-person singular for both formal and informal contexts. Following the Norman Conquest, the Middle English that emerged continued to use þou at first, but by the 13th century, Norman French influence had led to the use of the second-person plural ȝe or ye in formal contexts.

In Early Modern English superiors and strangers were therefore respectfully addressed as "ye" in the nominative and "you" in the objective; "thou" and "thee" were used for familiars and subordinates. The more widespread and observed this division became, the more pejorative it became to strangers to be called by the familiar form of address. By the 17th century, such a use among the nobility was strongly and deliberately contemptuous, as in the declamation of the prosecutor at Sir Walter Raleigh's 1603 trial "I thou thee, thou traitor!" Accordingly, the use of "thou" began to decline and it was effectively extinct in the everyday speech of most English dialects by the early 18th century, supplanted by the polite "you". Meanwhile, as part of English's continuing development away from its synthetic origins since the influx of French vocabulary following the Norman invasion, "you" had been replacing "ye" since the 15th century. English was left with a single second-person pronoun for all cases, numbers and contexts and largely incapable of maintaining a T?V distinction.

Notwithstanding all of this, the translators of the King James version of the Bible chose to employ the older forms in their work (1604?1611) in order to convey the grammatical distinctions made by their Hebrew, Greek and Latin sources. Its subsequent popularity and the religious rationale of many who continued to employ "thou" has preserved its use in English, but made it seem pious and (ironically) more formal and respectful than the everyday "you".


There are also a few relevant links there, like Thou and You.

trollcatman wrote:
I'm curious. I just assumed that because it is so similar to German and Dutch that there would be a V form as well, since both those modern languages do.


The pronoun which would become the V form was already there?it just wasn?t used as such yet, but only as plural. German and Dutch didn?t always have a T-V distinction, either. The German cognate to English thou is still in use, while Dutch has undergone an extra iteration of the process:

Quote:
Old Dutch did not appear to have a T?V distinction. Thu was used as the second-person singular, and gi as the second-person plural. In early Middle Dutch, influenced by Old French usage, the original plural pronoun gi (or ji in the north) came to be used as a respectful singular pronoun, creating a T?V distinction. However, the formal gi started to be used in more and more situations. By the 17th century, du had largely fallen out of use, although it lingered on in some of the more peripheral areas. At this point, the original T?V distinction had been lost, and the original V-pronoun gij/jij was used universally for both singular and plural regardless of the type of address. This resembled the state of English today, which has also (outside of dialectal, literary or religious use) lost its original T-pronoun thou.

Around this time, a new formal pronoun u started to come into use. This was also the object form of the subject pronoun gij/jij, and how it came to be used as a subject pronoun is not exactly clear. It is usually related to a form of address in writing of the time: letters were often addressed formally to U.E., standing for Uwe Edelheid ("Your Nobility"), which is thought to have been shortened to u eventually. It can be compared to the Spanish usted, which is a similar contraction of a phrase of indirect address. As in Spanish, the Dutch u was originally conjugated as the third person in verbs, although most verbs had identical second- and third-person singular forms, so that this difference was not apparent for the most part. It remains today in the use of u heeft ("you (formal) have", like hij heeft "he has"), compared to jij hebt ("you (informal) have"). However, u hebt is now also common.

Around the same time, it became more common to clarify when multiple people were being spoken to, by adding luyden, lieden, or a shortened variety, to the end of the pronoun. Thus, when speaking to multiple people, one would use jij luyden or je lieden. This combination was contracted and fused over time, eventually resulting in jullie, the informal plural pronoun that is used today. It can be compared, in its origin, to the English y'all or Spanish vosotros.


At some point in the past, all Indo-European languages had a cognate to Old English þū and Latin used as the sole second-person singular personal pronoun. Avē, Caesar, moritūrī tē salūtant!, not Avē, Caesar, moritūrī vōs salūtant! :)


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19 Aug 2014, 8:13 am

beneficii wrote:
It's interesting that, in the Abrahamic religions, you are supposed to speak very plainly and directly to God and not waste your time with formalities or polite modes of speech.

It's possible this could be attributed to the time when missionaries had more influence in Japan and the more modern anglo relaxation of formalities, especially from protestant sources. Had missionaries been effective in Japan centuries earlier, such formality may have been more evident. Cultural adoption is also another thing - people adopting Christianity may have also adopted cultural aspects in contrast to the strict formality of the Japanese culture of the time. It's an interesting synthesis nonetheless.


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19 Aug 2014, 12:00 pm

^^^ Really interesting stuff on the T-V distinction. Now that I think of it, if the original Hebrew/Aramaic/whatever sources of the Bible had T-V distinction, maybe the Dutch translation of Our Father is not accurate? The Dutch uses V for God, while the other languages I checked use T (if they have it).



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19 Aug 2014, 1:55 pm

In my prayers I allways called God by you. iy just dosent seem right to call him "você" (its like Usted in spanish) and I even have a nick name for Him is "J" I think it goes to the level of afinity you have with Him ?

As for my church ( I cant realy talk about any other religion becouse I havent been there) we call Him like what ever we like even in group prayers. Its allways very personal.

I think God likes to be a personal God idk and people that feel like He is like that call Him by You i think.

This is my opinion. :)



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19 Aug 2014, 6:22 pm

Danixia wrote:
iy just dosent seem right to call him "você" (its like Usted in spanish)


Portuguese você and Spanish usted do have the same etymology (vossa mercê, vuestra merced), but their usage is by no means the same. Calling someone usted in Spanish is closer to addressing them as o senhor or a senhora in Portuguese than it is to using você.

Nonetheless, the Abrahamic God is very much always ?capitalized?in Spanish.


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19 Aug 2014, 8:31 pm

Spiderpig wrote:
Danixia wrote:
iy just dosent seem right to call him "você" (its like Usted in spanish)


Portuguese você and Spanish usted do have the same etymology (vossa mercê, vuestra merced), but their usage is by no means the same. Calling someone usted in Spanish is closer to addressing them as o senhor or a senhora in Portuguese than it is to using você.

Nonetheless, the Abrahamic God is very much always ?capitalized?in Spanish.


Oh okay sorry ! I toght it was the same becouse they use it to talk formaly to each other XD

Yes its still capitalized but its closer then the formal you. Well He is a King so ... XD



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19 Aug 2014, 9:17 pm

Spiderpig wrote:
Danixia wrote:
iy just dosent seem right to call him "você" (its like Usted in spanish)


Portuguese você and Spanish usted do have the same etymology (vossa mercê, vuestra merced), but their usage is by no means the same. Calling someone usted in Spanish is closer to addressing them as o senhor or a senhora in Portuguese than it is to using você.

Nonetheless, the Abrahamic God is very much always ?capitalized?in Spanish.


Oh okay sorry ! I toght it was the same becouse they use it to talk formaly to each other XD

Yes its still capitalized but its closer then the formal you. Well He is a King so ... XD



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19 Aug 2014, 9:42 pm

Danixia wrote:
In my prayers I allways called God by you. iy just dosent seem right to call him "você" (its like Usted in spanish) and I even have a nick name for Him is "J" I think it goes to the level of afinity you have with Him ?

As for my church ( I cant realy talk about any other religion becouse I havent been there) we call Him like what ever we like even in group prayers. Its allways very personal.

I think God likes to be a personal God idk and people that feel like He is like that call Him by You i think.

This is my opinion. :)


Mine is that Jesus taught us to pray Abba, Father. Abba, I have been told in every Christian church that has ever addressed this topic, is an endearing, informal form of address--like a child saying "daddy."

I don't know a lot about Japanese culture but I have been told that they are very respectful of their elders, so I can see how this would seem strange to Asian Christians to call the Creator of the Universe and the eternal ultimate authority "daddy."


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20 Aug 2014, 11:47 am

Danixia wrote:
Spiderpig wrote:
Danixia wrote:
iy just dosent seem right to call him "você" (its like Usted in spanish)


Portuguese você and Spanish usted do have the same etymology (vossa mercê, vuestra merced), but their usage is by no means the same. Calling someone usted in Spanish is closer to addressing them as o senhor or a senhora in Portuguese than it is to using você.

Nonetheless, the Abrahamic God is very much always ?capitalized?in Spanish.


Oh okay sorry ! I toght it was the same becouse they use it to talk formaly to each other XD

Yes its still capitalized but its closer then the formal you. Well He is a King so ... XD


I think whether você is considered formal or informal differs between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese. At least that's what it said when I looked up the word, because I don't really speak Portuguese.



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21 Aug 2014, 2:12 am

LyraLuthTinu wrote:
Mine is that Jesus taught us to pray Abba, Father. ....--like a child saying "daddy."

....I can see how this would seem strange to Asian Christians to call the Creator of the Universe and the eternal ultimate authority "daddy."

I had a friend some years back who had an abusive father who eventually left. When his youth group suggested using "daddy" in prayers, he got quite upset. To him, daddy is close to a curse word.


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A smile is not always a smile.
A frown is not always a frown.
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