"this one" for "i"?

[awer]

Some Khajiit in the game "Skyrim" used "this one" instead of "i" (eg. this). I was wondering if it's a feature of some natural language I don't know?

[Neon Fox]

Well, there's Japanese; I am no expert but if I understand correctly almost all of the pronouns are actually nouns or demonstratives that have become conventionalized. E.g. "boku", which originally meant "servant" but is now used as "I" by men, with a casual connotation that's so strong as to be considered low-class or thuggish.

[Zaarin]

Actually, I suspect that, like Japanese and some other East Asian languages, the Khajiit language simply disprefers pronouns. In Morrowind, unconstrained by the need for voice actors, Khajiit either refer to themselves as "Khajiit" or by name while typically referring to the player by name, race, or the general term "unclawed," even where one would expect a pronoun in English; even third person pronouns tend to be rarer than appropriate nouns.

[M Mira]

Well, there's Japanese; I am no expert but if I understand correctly almost all of the pronouns are actually nouns or demonstratives that have become conventionalized. E.g. "boku", which originally meant "servant" but is now used as "I" by men, with a casual connotation that's so strong as to be considered low-class or thuggish.

Where did that example come from? It's wrong but somehow just keeps popping up.

"boku", which originally meant "servant" but is now used as "I" by men <- mostly correct

with a casual connotation that's so strong as to be considered low-class or thuggish <- this describes "ore", not "boku"

They should be:
"boku", which originally meant "servant" but is now used as "I" by boys or men for deference, made popular by Meiji-era literati.
and
"ore", which originally meant "self" but is now used as "I" by men, with a casual connotation that's so strong as to be considered low-class or thuggish outside of one's close friends.


And while pronouns can be a open class, it doesn't mean that all pronouns must be analyzable. Mandarin 1sg and 2sg 我wo3 and 你ni3 are derived from 我 and 爾 attested in the earliest texts and remained the most popular, or even the norm nowadays. Japanese 私/わたしwatashi also can't be analyzed, but is still the most neutral 1sg today. (Although 2sg あなたanata remained partially analyzable today)

[Neon Fox]

Well, there's Japanese; I am no expert but if I understand correctly almost all of the pronouns are actually nouns or demonstratives that have become conventionalized. E.g. "boku", which originally meant "servant" but is now used as "I" by men, with a casual connotation that's so strong as to be considered low-class or thuggish.

Where did that example come from? It's wrong but somehow just keeps popping up.

I got the "servant" part from one of Zompist's How To Conlang" books (I can't recall if it was LCK, ALC, CL, or PCK and I have reread all four in the past ~month), which also contained the "extremely casual/low-class" part. But I've encountered the v. casual connotation part in two or three other places--though I'll grant you I think one of them was a Wolverine comic book. :)

[zompist]

I got that from the linguist Takao Suzuki:

Now, over a hundred years after the beginning of the Meiji period, boku is considered inappropriate for use when speaking to superiors or on formal occasions. [A government document] states that boku 'I' is used by male students, and that even they should be encouraged to replace it with watashi 'I' when they go out in the world.

He goes on to explain that boku, like other pronouns (or 'pronouns'), has grown more despective over time.

It definitely doesn't express deference. However, it's quite true that ore is even less polite.

[Rui]

The standard/common word for "I, me" in Mandarin is 我 but in very formal language, 本人 ("this person") also refers to the speaker. I've seen it used on dating sites/apps before too, to clarify that the person is/isn't using fake pictures to conceal their identity, i.e. 照片(非)本人 ("photo[s] (aren't) mine").

Hell, even in English, "this guy", accompanied with pointing to oneself, can refer to "I, me" as well. It's definitely not common, but I've heard it as an informal way of delivering news, especially among friends (e.g. "Guess who just got hired at Company X? This guy!")

[2+3 clusivity]

PIE's /*h₁eǵ(oH/Hom)/ appears to be "this one." I suspect the /*-ǵ-/ was probably a /**-ḱ-/ demonstrative.

[KathTheDragon]

It could well have been the pronoun stem *h₁e- suffixed by an "emphatic" element *-ǵe (also found in the Germanic accusatives, for example)

[Curlyjimsam]

In my language Greater Atlian the demonstrative pronouns / determiners meaning "this, that" (which inflect for gender and number) are used in place of personal pronouns, and there is no actual person distinction. For example, the pronoun ka can be translated as any of "this female person", "that female person", "I (female)", "you (singular female)" or "she". I'm pretty certain no actual language has a system like this, though.