This is a minor distinction to make it clear in writing, same as De vs de in Norwegian, and several other languages. It's a common way of turning a plural into a formal address.
Incidentally, in Norwegian the formal form is now so archaic that short of communicating very formally with a very old person, in most cases it will come across as rude and sarcastic (you're implying someone is seriously up themselves)
In a German sentence a change in capitalization of Sie can very well turn a "formal you" (Sie) into a more general "them" (sie). So it is not just spelling, although it is a very common mistake.
This is why the British and people in the US do not act the same. The British have their behaviour while us Americans have our behavior. Totally different.
The same is in italian “lei”, except during fascism where they introduced as a formal way to address someone as “voi” which would be the plural of “tu”/“voi”
Afaik it was because the “Lei” was considered elitist and because in the roman latin culture they had only the “tu” up to caesar introduced the “voi”, so maybe you know fascists had some sort of fetish for the roman empire so they chose to bring the culture as close as possible closer to what roman culture was
Caesar didn't "introduce the voi". Is this an urban myth that Italians believe? The tu/vous distinction in Romance languages arose in medieval times. Not only did it not exist in Caesar's time, it is absent from the centuries of Imperial-era literature in Latin.
There is a wide literature on Latin forms of address. Eleanor Dickey's monograph published by Oxford University Press is a good survey.
I am not an historian but it seems so, I’ve found in the past few minutes two sources that attribute Voi to romans, its in italian but sure it can be translated, going to paste the original links unaltered
Your first link backs up exactly what I mentioned above:
> In antichità, quando si parlava latino, le formule di cortesia non esistevano … L’usanza del Voi nasce insieme a una nuova formula politica: la tetrarchia introdotta nel 293 da Diocleziano.
It was an innovation in Romance that took place centuries after Caesar and most of the Imperial era. Again, there is ample scholarly literature on this, so no need to resort to popular references like encyclopedias.
Yeah I saw that, but I'd say if that makes sense, that they're attributing the introduction of "Voi" within the roman era and not in the medieval times, right? The second one instead attributes it to "Roma Cesarea", to be fair, it is not the encyclopaedia that attributes it to "Roma Cesarea" but the article that influenced Mussolini quoted on the article on the encyclopaedia, so they're probably only quoting, but I don't know enough, so I'd trust you're right, thank you
Historians today tend to trace the ultimate fall of the Roman Empire to the multiple crises of the third century, even if the name of the empire limped on for a couple of centuries more. So AD 293 is quite a late date, on the threshold to a new era. From the viewpoint of modern historians, it is hard to understand how Italian Fascism could have seen anything that late as worth being proud of and emulating.
The Western Empire was the only Roman Empire that the Italian Fascists ever really cared about. Early Byzantium was totally foreign to their mythology.
It makes sense to me: high ranking people often have conversations which are on the behalf (or at least implicate the future) of large groups of people. Thus a plural formal second person, as well as the "royal we".
(note that english aristocrats were often spoken of, not by given [or if they had one, family] name, but by the geographical entity that was the basis of their nobility)
Dutch is similar with “U” being both singular and plural. Verb conjugation is the same for both cases.
This has been interesting as an English speaker learning Dutch! Luckily I never really latched on to sms-speak but I can imagine some cohorts of English speakers have to break the habit of reading “u” as shorthand for the the full word.
This lead me down a short Wikipedia rabbit-hole that is quite interesting (at least to me).
Apparently Dutch originally had "du" as 2nd person singular and "gij" as 2nd person plural. From the 16th century, "gij" started being used as singular polite form. (Possibly under the influence of Latin and French.) Later, "du" disappeared. Up to this point, the progression is similar to English.
"gij" then transformed to "jij" in the northern part of the Dutch language area and in written language; while it remained "gij" in Flemish spoken language.
However, then in the 17th century people started using "Uwe Edelheit" ("Your Nobility") as a new formal form in letters. This evolved into the current formal pronoun "u".
(Note also that the accusative form of "gij" is also "u", but is not related to the formal "u".)
Native Dutch speaker here. These days one doesn't capitalise the "u" except at the start of a sentence, however in older texts (40+ years?) it was usual to see the "U" pronoun capitalised at all times. Sorry if I'm mansplaining but I noticed you capitalising it and thought I'd point it out, because it would stand out to a modern Dutch reader.
As for sms-speak, I'd be flabbergasted if you encountered the u-form anywhere in text messages except maybe in automated OTP messages from your bank. So I would guess that's something you needn't worry about :).
Good luck in your language-learning journey. Assuming you're living in the Netherlands, I'm curious as to how your integration is going? My observation is that Dutch culture can be insanely hard for foreigners to get a foothold in, partly because of the "polite" tendency of most locals to insist on speaking English around non-native Dutch. I feel like that gesture, which may seem accommodating on the surface level, can almost be an exclusionary dynamic in itself.
Hey! I think you created an account just to reply to comment. That's cool!
Appreciate the spelling tip. I make a lot of mistakes writing in Dutch as it is. I would likely keep doing that by instinct until someone told me.
I am in the Netherlands for just over a year now. I live in a small village near the Belgian border and work in Eindhoven. I've actually found my neighbors and coworkers very accommodating towards my efforts to learn your language. I've taken 90 hours of lessons in about 9 months, which made me more confident to push people more and challenge myself. At my job, I try not to speak English for social situations, although all of our work is done in English due to remote workers in other countries.
Although I've had a good experience, I can see how some less assertive immigrants might not feel empowered to ask others honor their social requests. There have been times that I asked for something in Dutch, and without any hesitation, the attendant or store worker responded to my request in English. That stings a bit, but it stings for my ego because it doesn't usually happen. Many Dutch people in my daily life ask me to repeat myself, but they don't automatically make an assumption about my preferences and instead rely on the clues of the conversation to guide their responses. All of this is also dependent on the situation, eg. for work tasks, I speak English, because miscommunication is not an option.
If someone is reading this also as a new NL immigrant, I would say you should be assertive and ask a little on your path to find friends. It's okay to make friends in one language and transition to another if you both speak it. Shopping should be done in Dutch, read the Dutch newspaper, etc etc. Put in the effort and many Dutchmen will respect that. Habit might let their tongue slip, but kindly and firmly remind them, and they'll go back.
For Dutchies, I would say that that it's probably worth the effort to make a friend. If not, consider it the new normal for politeness. Just try to keep going in the same language until visible confusion or a blocking of progress in the conversation.
If you don't mind, I'd love if you reached out and sent me an email! I'd love to keep chatting about it. Address is in my profile.
Thus, to be polite, you address someone as many people that aren't part of the conversation.