zompist bboard

So an idea I’m considering using in one of my remade conlangs is having two full sets of pronouns: A familiar set that are native to the language, and a polite set that are borrowed. Does this make sense as something that could happen? I know that while pronoun borrowing is rare, it is attested, e.g. English they.

I'm pretty sure Indonesian did this at least with singular pronouns.

It happened in Basque-Icelandic pidgin. All the pronouncs wre borrowed form English, which was not one of the primary lexical contributors.

It did occur to me some time after I wrote this that they, like she, probably owes its existence to Old English’s original personal pronouns becoming homophonous or nearly so, and wouldn’t have been borrowed otherwise. I’ll have to look into Indonesian pronouns, though.

Chengjiang wrote:It did occur to me some time after I wrote this that they, like she, probably owes its existence to Old English’s original personal pronouns becoming homophonous or nearly so, and wouldn’t have been borrowed otherwise.

Wiki sez: The feminine nominative hēo was at some point replaced with the feminine nominative article sēo, yielding "she"; whereas the h in plural forms such as hīe was replaced with þ under Norse influence as it evolved (a slower development that was not complete until well into the Middle English period), yielding "they, them, their".

I’ll have to look into Indonesian pronouns, though.

Saya 'I, me, my' is apparently borrowed from Sanskrit sahāya meaning 'help' as a mark of deference to royalty or something. The informal equivalent is the indigenous aku AFAIK. There is also gua and gue borrowed from Minnan, which are informal (and mean 'I, me, my' just like aku), but these are more recent borrowings. People may be addressed informally by native pronouns such as kamu or engkau (singular) or kalian (plural) or more formally either using native words such as (ba)pak 'father' (used for older men in general and generally advisable for foreigners to use formally with men), (i)bu 'mother' (used for older women in general and generally advisable for foreigners to use formally with women), anda (a relatively neutral pronoun), encik (for addressing adult men in Malay but not in Indonesian), or tuan (for addressing adult men in Malay and especially white men in Indonesian, probably from tuhan 'god') or using borrowed words such as saudara (literally 'brother' from Sanskrit; about as neutral as anda AFAICT), saudari (literally 'sister', also from Sanskrit), nyonya (from Portuguese dona 'lady', for addressing white women), nona (variant of nyonya), om (from Dutch oom 'uncle', for addressing foreign and particularly Chinese men), tante (meaning 'auntie', from Dutch tante 'aunt', for addressing foreign and particularly Chinese women), mas ('older brother' in Javanese for addressing male service personnel in Java even in Indonesian), mbak, or sus (both apparently meaning 'older sister' in Javanese; female equivalent of mas). It seems all of these forms except saya, aku, kamu, engkau, and kalian can be used both in the singular and in the plural. I think they may also be usable in the third person.

Vijay wrote:Wiki sez: The feminine nominative hēo was at some point replaced with the feminine nominative article sēo, yielding "she"; whereas the h in plural forms such as hīe was replaced with þ under Norse influence as it evolved (a slower development that was not complete until well into the Middle English period), yielding "they, them, their".

Someone should tell 'em it isn't complete yet.