On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 6:26 PM Dave Long via Silklist < [email protected]> wrote:
> One of my chefy friends had a great rule about who she voluntarily eats > food with - it is people she wouldn't mind exchanging bodily fluids with > > On the other side of this, I often have to decide, when relating > anecdotes, whether to label someone a "friend" or a "colleague", and > generally make that decision on the basis of "how often have we eaten > together" (literal com-pan-ionship?). > > Less important is the question of using formal (V) or informal (T) second > person pronouns. I generally[0] stick to V except with people I either > interact with frequently or share meals with on the infrequent occasions > we're in contact. > In the South Indian context, a good filter would be "would you be OK with this person using the informal second person to you?". For historical and social reasons, this is an even better filter for women than men. In fact, someone once told me "my best friends are those that call me 'di'" (which is a second person familiar mode of address for a woman in Tamil). Amusingly, 'di' means approximately opposite things in Tamil (where it is a term of great familiarity) and Hindi/other North Indian languages (where it means "older sister" and hence a respectful form of address) Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
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