There was an interesting discussion this morning on Radio Cymru about the use of pronouns in Welsh. Like in many languages, there are different forms of the second person pronoun in Welsh:<\/p>\n
– ti<\/strong> [ti\u02d0] = you singular and informal There are also emphatic forms of these pronouns: tithau<\/em>, chithau<\/em>, chwithau<\/em> and chdithau<\/em>, though they are less commonly used.<\/p>\n Chi<\/em>, chdi<\/em> and chwi<\/em> come from the Middle Welsh chwi<\/em>, from the Proto-Celtic *sw\u012bs<\/em>, from the Proto-Indo-European *wos<\/em> (you plural) [source<\/a>]. Ti comes from the Proto-Celtic *t\u016b<\/em>, from the Proto-Indo-European *t\u00fah\u2082<\/em> (you singular) [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n So ti<\/strong> is the equivalent of tu<\/em> in French, Du<\/em> in German, t\u00fa<\/em> in Spanish, thu<\/em> in Scottish Gaelic, and so on, and chi<\/strong> is the equivalent of vous<\/em>, Sie<\/em>, Usted<\/em> and sibh<\/em> in those languages.<\/p>\n The discussion on the radio was about when people use the formal chi<\/em> and when they use the informal ti<\/em> – some people said they used chi<\/em> only with older strangers. Others said that their parents used chi<\/em> which each other, but that they used ti<\/em> with their parents. Some people complained about the increasing used of ti<\/em>, even with older people.<\/p>\n While you don’t have to worry about which you to use in English as there’s only one, you might not be sure whether to use someone’s first name, or title plus surname, or even just their surname when addressing them. I get round this by generally avoiding using people’s names, which is also handy if I can’t quite remember their names.<\/p>\n Is the use of informal and formal modes of address changing where you are?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was an interesting discussion this morning on Radio Cymru about the use of pronouns in Welsh. Like in many languages, there are different forms of the second person pronoun in Welsh: – ti [ti\u02d0] = you singular and informal – chi [\u03c7i\u02d0] = you plural, and formal you singular and plural – chdi [\u03c7di\u02d0] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10,45,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-proto-indo-european","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– chi<\/strong> [\u03c7i\u02d0] = you plural, and formal you singular and plural
\n– chdi<\/strong> [\u03c7di\u02d0] = northern dialect variant of ti
\n– chwi<\/strong> [\u03c7wi\u02d0] = literary alternative to chi<\/p>\n