[Mageia-i18n] German home made problem

[andre999]

Oliver Burger a écrit :
>
> Rémi Verschelde<rverschelde at gmail.com>  schrieb am 2010-12-21
>> Do we need to decide something for all the teams or is the choice
>> left to the teams, *i.e.* does it need a global policy?
> I think, we can't have a global policy. The usage of the formal
> ("Sie", "Vous",....) and the informal ("Du","Tu",...) are quite
> different betwenn the languages. (E.g. as far as I know, the Swedish
> use the formal one only for their Royals while the French use the
> formal one quite a lot.
>
> So I think we can only exchange our views but we can't reach an
> agreement.
>
> Oliver aka obgr_seneca

An historical perspective :
Don't forget that -- at least in English and French -- the distinction 
was originally singular / plural.
The English singular "thou" being lost, retaining only the plural "you".
The French plural "vous" being also used for a formal singular.

This usage of formal singular derives from the practice of royalty, 
considering themselves too important to be put at the same level as an 
ordinary person.
Also used in first person pronouns.  Royalty saying "We ..." instead of 
"I ...".  (Or "Nous ..." instead of "Je ..." in French.)
Sorry, I'm not familiar enough with other languages to give examples.

Hope this helps a little deciding what to use, which of course should be 
decided by language.