this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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Spanish

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ok so is the whole usted being polite thing like asking "does her highness want more wine?" instead of addressing the person directly? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 months ago by Apytele@sh.itjust.works to c/spanish@lemmy.world
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[–] INeedMana@piefed.zip 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

So that's what it was! They just went all high-strung and official

And now our cultures shift, dropping the "sir", because we're getting exposure to American corps. Making everything even more mixed up :D

[–] Apytele@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Well I'm southern so I say sir and ma'am almost reflexively (and occasionally get tripped up when I meet a northern "miss") but it helps me tense usted to know that is actually the same origin of referring to a dignitary in the third person. And I'll probably get around to referring to most patients that way, most of my job is talking people out of dumb decisions and it's always helped to lead with sir and ma'am so presumably usted will yield similar results.

[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Languages go through silly changes sometimes. I'm almost sure (after a whopping 0% of research) that it all happened because using the formal you sounded more polite/respectful. The weird thing is, in my non-English language speaking country, I grew up hearing that English people just "tú" everyone. And in all fairness, learning Spanish, a LOT of them "tú" everyone literally.

[–] INeedMana@piefed.zip 2 points 2 months ago

Yes, exactly the same here, another non-English country