Nov 12, 2010

Multilingual living II - Speaking with the gods

So I was thinking: when turning to the higher power, in languages that have a singular formal (such as “vous”, «Вы» or Sie), why is this formal form not used, but the les formal: tu, ты or du is used?
Isn’t the plural form supposed to show more respect and when should one be showing the utmost respect, if not when communicating with one’s gods?

3 comments:

  1. I think it might have to do with the goal of so called abrahamic religions, or at least their mystic modalities - to get closer to God, to cleave to God, to erase the distance.
    Also - this is just a thought - the plural form might be considered suspicious from the point of view of monotheism. There has been a lot written on the two names of God in the first chapters of Bereshit, and people have been proposing theories around one of them, Elohim, which is plural.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Adonai is technically plural...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Interestng....

    Elohim and Adonai are plural, but still when the pronoun is used it's "ata", which is singular and not "atem" - the plural...

    ReplyDelete