XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.english.usage   
   From: naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   On 2024-05-17, Peter Moylan  wrote:   
      
   > A week or so ago I went to see a French film (The Taste of Things), and   
   > was struck by the fact that formal pronouns were used by everyone --   
   > even between man and wife.   
   >   
   > The setting is 1880s France. I know that formality in language was   
   > greater then, but I was surprised by the extent of it.   
      
   A few days ago I started watching _Paris Police 1900_ and spouses   
   also vouvoyer each other there.  (Not a crime procedural, btw, as   
   the title might suggest, but a political thriller.)   
      
   Such things can change rapidly.  The formerly common practice of   
   addressing acquaintances or colleagues by first name and formal   
   pronouns ("Hamburger Sie") disappeared from German usage over the   
   course of the 1980s or thereabouts.  It was still omnipresent when   
   I was a kid, but gone by the time I was an adult.  _Magnum, P.I._,   
   which had already aired in dubbed form in the 1980s in Germany, was   
   re-dubbed a decade later for content reasons, which also offered   
   the opportunity to use more informal addressing as the previous   
   usage felt too old-fashioned.   
      
   --   
   Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)