It frustrates me no end that my Googler friends take their NDAs so seriously and every new announcement from Big G catches me completely by surprise. Harrumph.
The newest thing is Google+. While I certainly won't be betting money either way whether this time, this time for real you guys, Google's going to strike a chord with the online social graph, especially given the paucity of concrete information (though the introductory videos are really good) there's a small, subtle, yet complex problem with the service.
One of the top-level items in the new experiment's structure is called +You.
Doesn't seem like much of a problem, right? Not in English, no, but English is one of the only European languages that only has a single form for the second person. The rest of us still use two: formal and informal.
Quick sidebar, here. English used to have two versions of the second person, too: you and thou. The latter is still used by the Amish, among family – which is how it was traditionally used. You'd say thou to your family and friends, it was the informal second person; you'd say you to an elder or an authority figure. It always struck me as weird that Modern English speakers consider the archaic thou, thee and thy to be pompous and lofty. According to eminently reliable sources (Wikipedia) this is due to the exclusive used of thou-thee-thy in early English translations of the Bible which, with the exception of Shakespeare, represent the only contact modern speakers of English have with those words. In the context of such a solemn holy text, it's no wonder that this form of the second person seems lofty – despite this being the exact opposite of how it was actually used in conversation!
Back to the action. When I visited the Google+ site it was automatically localized into Dutch and I noticed in the top left, where I'd expected to see +You, the rather odd +U. It took me a while to figure out this two-character combo was the Dutch translation of +You – u is indeed the Dutch formal second person. It's how you address a teacher, elder stranger or a cop. It's weird to see it out of context, so it took me a while to parse, and I was strangely uncomfortable with it.
I think I'd have been just as uncomfortable with +Jij, which would be the informal address, since it's a bit rude for a web service to address me so casually without so much as an introduction.
Which is a weird problem. It's not even a problem so much as… an oddity. I can't quite articulate how I feel about it, or how I'd solve the issue, only that I can feel it's not quite right.
Given Google's excellent track record in internationalizing their services I'm quite certain that substantial discussion took place about whether to translate +You as +Jij, +Du, +Tu and +Tue, or +U, +Sie, +Vous and +Usted.
I'd be very interested in learning the arguments that ultimately led them to choose the latter path.
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