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Holy Shqipëri, Rachel! That was a lot of good work. Thanks!

PS: Latest from Googlebania: "the plural ju "you" is used as a polite singular, and the actual singular ti is familiar. As an object attached to a verb, they have the forms ju and të. The word lutem means "I request", so these pronouns are its object."

So - they do have polite / familiar "you" forms. Albanian is Indo-European, but not from the same branch of the Indo-European tree as most European languages. That, I knew before I looked it up. The polite /familiar? I had no idea. It seems even non - Indo-European languages, e.g. Finnish, preserve these "you" forms as well. Hungarian (same family as Finnish) has them too. I just checked.

 

I think most languages have polite/familiar forms of address. It's English that's the weird one! (And we did have it before.) IIRC, Mexican Spanish is also losing its "polite forms" and using mostly informal, while Spain is still keeping theirs. I can't remember if the rest of Central/South America is following Mexico or Spain.

 

@Rachel83az Hi again - just checked Albanian Greetings with Google:

Good morning: Miremengjes
Good day: Diten en mire.
Good afternoon: Mirembrema

I'm guessing Cudoo might differ. I think I'd go with Google on this.

It seems in Europe, there's a language family demarcation on using "Good day" before noon. Romance languages do - e.g. Buon giorno, Bonjour, Bom dia, Buenos días...

German? Right. Guten Morgen, or as my friend says (in North Germany) "Moin."

 

Right. I've noticed.

 

Did we? I only recall seeing singular and plural forms - Thee and Thou vs Ye. I thought an Englishman could use "Thee" even with his King - e.g. "I pray thee, Sire - do not cut off mine wretched head..."

 

https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/formal-and-informal-languages

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/9780/did-english-ever-have-a-formal-version-of-you

 

Yes. thou (singular) and you (plural). "You" became a polite form all-round and "thou" was dropped, except in remote, wilderness places like "Yorksha - God's Back Garden!" where it morphed into "tha" as in "Aye! An' tha can deal wi't!" Thanks. I have a lot to learn. That "you" change happened in Early Modern English, actually, so my beheading example is correct for its time...