Dhekhnami

[Ares Land]

I remember reading somewhere that in France, Catholics use Tu for addressing God (in line with the Latin tradition), while the Protestant Huguenots used Vous, as they found the t-form too familiar. I can't find the source right now. (German, FWIW, uses du, independent of denomination.)

I think it was the other way around. Historically the Catholics used vous. I'm less sure about the Protestants but I think they used tu.

Now it's tu no matter the denomination. The Church switched to tu since, following Vatican II.

One oddity is that while the Church changes the Lord's Prayer, they left the Hail Mary as it was. So you use tu for God but vous for His mother.

It feels proper, in a way. I guess I could bring myself to say tu to the Ruler of the Universe if He really insisted on it, but to His mother? No way!
(I'm an agnostic. The above does not reflect the opinion of French Catholics in any way )

[hwhatting]

It feels proper, in a way. I guess I could bring myself to say tu to the Ruler of the Universe if He really insisted on it, but to His mother? No way!

"You can call me Yeshua, bro. It's all cool, dude... what? How did you just address my mum? Eternal damnation!"

And thanks for the correction, seems I misrememebered.

[BGMan]

It has occurred to me that Dhekhnami-style ranking could be introduced into German... in many cases simply by using High German for the higher rank and Low German for the lower. Just an amusing note.

Then there's how "thou" disappeared in English because it came to be seen as low-rank. (Upside: That means we could translate dzide as "thou" at least.)

Problem is, nowadays, paradoxically, people perceive thou as fancier.

Not really a problem if you flip it... think of a very high-ranked person addressing most other people as "thou".