4 ms·

I find it surprising actually how much these seniority rules are well-defined in many cultures, but in Brazil there is strong variation - even in the same geogr

by dkga 1y ago

I find it surprising actually how much these seniority rules are well-defined in many cultures, but in Brazil there is strong variation - even in the same geography. For example, a colleague who is learning Brazilian Portuguese was under the impression that "você" and "tu" were the equivalent of "vous/tu" or "Sie/du". In reality, they are just different regional ways of saying the informal you. In Brazilian Portuguese is to call someone "o Senhor/a Senhora" based on their gender, with a singular third person declination. And in the countryside, it is common to hear people use "Doutor/Doutora" the same way they would use the normal formal language when addressing educated people or land-owners. Another example many people outside Brazil find interesting: in my family we were taught to never use the formal towards anyone. The rationale is that everyone is equal and that using the formal language was disrespectful because it created an artificial distance between us and the other person. We were also taught never to use the formal language when praying for the same reason. However, other people are taught to use the formal language towards bosses and elders, also with a respect rationale, and some other folks in Brazil (even from big cities) actually require that their children address them with formal language. So now when in doubt I use the formal language with people that are much older than I am although that feels utterly unnatural to me, but I always make people comfortable to use the informal with me as I personally find this to be more respectful. Just one more comment: in Brazil it is unfortunately the case that some offices have a standard treatment like "your excellency", etc, which are nominally meant to respect the office but in reality become a kind of test of compliance and obedience. I recall in particular one incident where an attorney presenting in front of the Supreme Court was severely reprimanded for not address justices with the proper term. Personally, I am not sure that required compliance with a style - by regulation or by societal expectations - is indeed "respect" if it is not matched with actions and posture that really reflect due consideration towards the other person.

inerte 1y ago
Or the judge who sued his condominium demanding its employees call him "doutor" (Your Honor)... As a Brazilian raised to not care about this stuff, I would say even rebelled a bit, it was weird to basically be required to do so once I reached adulthood. I remember getting in front of a sheriff and having to address him as "doutor". I remember talking to an intern in law firms and he corrected me when I addressed him by name saying, "No, it's DOUTOR Adriano". Gee, let's not even mention the medical field... veterinarians and nutritionists want to be called "doutor"...
- yxhuvud 1y ago
  The Germans are also pretty ridiculous around titles, in that not only can you have multiple titles, and each are mentioned, but you can also have several copies of each. So someone can be Herr Doktor Doktor Professor.
  - dserodio 1y ago
    But "Doctor" means you have an actual PhD, a doctorate. That's a worthy title, IMHO
    - fy20 1y ago
      My country has a fairly high % of PhD holders, but nowhere near enough jobs for them, so they end up getting regular jobs (e.g. I have a friend who got a PhD in laser physics, who now plays with AI models for license plate recognition). These people usually leave the PhD off their CV, as some employers frown upon it, as they think the person will have higher expectations and be hard to work with.
      - hulitu 1y ago
        > These people usually leave the PhD off their CV, as some employers frown upon it, as they think the person will have higher expectations and be hard to work with. Most of them are hard to work with. As is with any people that climb on titles. They consider themselves special. That's why it is difficult for them to integrate in a team.
        ivell 1y ago
        Not my personal experience. Many of whom I have worked with are quite friendly and open. PhDs are not take just for social climbing. Many were genuinely interested in the subject until they got disillusioned..
        bubblyworld 1y ago
tdeck 1y ago
> Another example many people outside Brazil find interesting: in my family we were taught to never use the formal towards anyone. The rationale is that everyone is equal and that using the formal language was disrespectful because it created an artificial distance between us and the other person. We were also taught never to use the formal language when praying for the same reason. Interestingly this is why Quakers continued to address people as thou/thee long after everyone else abandoned the practice. Thou was originally the "informal" second person singular pronoun in English, "you" was plural. People used "thou" (the familiar form) in conversations with God. People used "you" as a singular pronoun to be polite. Eventually, "you" overtook thou. But the Quakers believed that using "you" to show respect was anti-egalitarian and resisted the trend for a long time. Nowadays because "thou" appears a lot in the King James Bible it tends to be associated with formal, archaic language, so if anything the connotation is the reverse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
- triceratops 1y ago
  > People used "thou" (the familiar form) in conversations with God. People used "you" as a singular pronoun to be polite. Why didn't people address God with "you"?
  - tdeck 1y ago
    The wiki article I linked goes into it a bit: > Early English translations of the Bible used the familiar singular form of the second person, which mirrors common usage trends in other languages. The familiar and singular form is used when speaking to God in French (in Protestantism both in past and present, in Catholicism since the post–Vatican II reforms), German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic and many others (all of which maintain the use of an "informal" singular form of the second person in modern speech). In addition, the translators of the King James Version of the Bible attempted to maintain the distinction found in Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek between singular and plural second-person pronouns and verb forms, so they used thou, thee, thy, and thine for singular, and ye, you, your, and yours for plural.
kstrauser 1y ago
I feel like the American version of intra-family respect variations is “Father” vs “Dad”. In my family growing up, my dad’s name was “Dad” from my POV. “Father” was a strange-to-me formality that only a couple of my friends’ families use. “Hey Dad, wanna grab lunch?” is technically using a title of respect, but feels way different than “Hello, Father. Would you like to make lunch plans?” My kids call me Dad, unless we’re greeting each other like Jerry and Newman on Seinfeld to be funny, which is something always initiated by them: “Hello, Father.” “Hello, Daughter.” kid giggles One time I heard my kid talking to his dad and calling him “Sir”. That felt utterly foreign to me. If I called my own dad “Sir”, he’d rightfully have assumed I was being a smartass. There’s never another situation where I’d address him that way.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  Typo: “…I heard my friend talking to his dad…”
JoeJonathan 1y ago
Funnily enough, você itself was once more formal, having been a contraction of "vossa mercê." I'm surprised to hear that your family did not use formal language even in prayer. May I ask what religion(s) you grew up practicing? Catholic prayers often use antiquated, formal language (like "vós"). I don't know enough about Candomblé, but at least Nagô Candomblé is pretty highly formalized in the sense that Yorùbá is the liturgical language. The "Doutor/Doutora" thing bothers me. I see it all the time with my in-laws empregadas, who use it to refer to my father-in-law (who's an MD) and my mother-in-law (who isn't). It feels weirdly obsequious in that context, even though there's a very clear power and class hierarchy.
tandoei 1y ago
It can't be a coincidence that my Mexican family we were also taught to not use the formal 'usted' as it's too distant and actually has the opposite effect of making others feel disrespected. It's intentionally used when talking badly about someone similar to 'well YOU {usually bad thing but the emphasis on the formal you makes this feel more impactful}'

by dkga 1y ago

inerte 1y ago

Or the judge who sued his condominium demanding its employees call him "doutor" (Your Honor)... As a Brazilian raised to not care about this stuff, I would say even rebelled a bit, it was weird to basically be required to do so once I reached adulthood. I remember getting in front of a sheriff and having to address him as "doutor". I remember talking to an intern in law firms and he corrected me when I addressed him by name saying, "No, it's DOUTOR Adriano". Gee, let's not even mention the medical field... veterinarians and nutritionists want to be called "doutor"...

yxhuvud 1y ago
The Germans are also pretty ridiculous around titles, in that not only can you have multiple titles, and each are mentioned, but you can also have several copies of each. So someone can be Herr Doktor Doktor Professor.
- dserodio 1y ago
  But "Doctor" means you have an actual PhD, a doctorate. That's a worthy title, IMHO
  - fy20 1y ago
    My country has a fairly high % of PhD holders, but nowhere near enough jobs for them, so they end up getting regular jobs (e.g. I have a friend who got a PhD in laser physics, who now plays with AI models for license plate recognition). These people usually leave the PhD off their CV, as some employers frown upon it, as they think the person will have higher expectations and be hard to work with.
    - hulitu 1y ago
      > These people usually leave the PhD off their CV, as some employers frown upon it, as they think the person will have higher expectations and be hard to work with. Most of them are hard to work with. As is with any people that climb on titles. They consider themselves special. That's why it is difficult for them to integrate in a team.
      - ivell 1y ago
        Not my personal experience. Many of whom I have worked with are quite friendly and open. PhDs are not take just for social climbing. Many were genuinely interested in the subject until they got disillusioned..
        bubblyworld 1y ago

tdeck 1y ago

> Another example many people outside Brazil find interesting: in my family we were taught to never use the formal towards anyone. The rationale is that everyone is equal and that using the formal language was disrespectful because it created an artificial distance between us and the other person. We were also taught never to use the formal language when praying for the same reason. Interestingly this is why Quakers continued to address people as thou/thee long after everyone else abandoned the practice. Thou was originally the "informal" second person singular pronoun in English, "you" was plural. People used "thou" (the familiar form) in conversations with God. People used "you" as a singular pronoun to be polite. Eventually, "you" overtook thou. But the Quakers believed that using "you" to show respect was anti-egalitarian and resisted the trend for a long time. Nowadays because "thou" appears a lot in the King James Bible it tends to be associated with formal, archaic language, so if anything the connotation is the reverse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou

triceratops 1y ago
> People used "thou" (the familiar form) in conversations with God. People used "you" as a singular pronoun to be polite. Why didn't people address God with "you"?
- tdeck 1y ago
  The wiki article I linked goes into it a bit: > Early English translations of the Bible used the familiar singular form of the second person, which mirrors common usage trends in other languages. The familiar and singular form is used when speaking to God in French (in Protestantism both in past and present, in Catholicism since the post–Vatican II reforms), German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic and many others (all of which maintain the use of an "informal" singular form of the second person in modern speech). In addition, the translators of the King James Version of the Bible attempted to maintain the distinction found in Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek between singular and plural second-person pronouns and verb forms, so they used thou, thee, thy, and thine for singular, and ye, you, your, and yours for plural.

kstrauser 1y ago

I feel like the American version of intra-family respect variations is “Father” vs “Dad”. In my family growing up, my dad’s name was “Dad” from my POV. “Father” was a strange-to-me formality that only a couple of my friends’ families use. “Hey Dad, wanna grab lunch?” is technically using a title of respect, but feels way different than “Hello, Father. Would you like to make lunch plans?” My kids call me Dad, unless we’re greeting each other like Jerry and Newman on Seinfeld to be funny, which is something always initiated by them: “Hello, Father.” “Hello, Daughter.” kid giggles One time I heard my kid talking to his dad and calling him “Sir”. That felt utterly foreign to me. If I called my own dad “Sir”, he’d rightfully have assumed I was being a smartass. There’s never another situation where I’d address him that way.

kstrauser 1y ago
Typo: “…I heard my friend talking to his dad…”

JoeJonathan 1y ago

Funnily enough, você itself was once more formal, having been a contraction of "vossa mercê." I'm surprised to hear that your family did not use formal language even in prayer. May I ask what religion(s) you grew up practicing? Catholic prayers often use antiquated, formal language (like "vós"). I don't know enough about Candomblé, but at least Nagô Candomblé is pretty highly formalized in the sense that Yorùbá is the liturgical language. The "Doutor/Doutora" thing bothers me. I see it all the time with my in-laws empregadas, who use it to refer to my father-in-law (who's an MD) and my mother-in-law (who isn't). It feels weirdly obsequious in that context, even though there's a very clear power and class hierarchy.

tandoei 1y ago

It can't be a coincidence that my Mexican family we were also taught to not use the formal 'usted' as it's too distant and actually has the opposite effect of making others feel disrespected. It's intentionally used when talking badly about someone similar to 'well YOU {usually bad thing but the emphasis on the formal you makes this feel more impactful}'