[brlug-general] the short answer.

[Chopin Cusachs]

Catalan has a formal you, a contraction for "your grace," but doesn't use
it as often as Castilian.  The familiar plural, vosotros in one, vosaltres in
the other, or the semiformal vos with second person plural verb is also
to be found.  In the River Plate areas, one hears forms like "vos sabés"
where tu sabes is expected.

But Catalan uses the second person plural in places where Castilian
tends to prefer the formal one.  It is funny how the custom works, if
you don't grow up in it.  I would use the familiar with a relative not too
much older or a peer, but the polite with a social superior, inferior, or
a stranger.  So "Usted" was used between professors and staff in
general.

But after I was in Valencia a couple of months I was invited to join a lunch
gathering of professors in the quarters of the chief porter and his wife.
There, I was told, everyone used the familiar, which I did. It is a
testimony to upward mobility that a son of the porter or janitor is, or was
a few years ago, a professor himself.  I knew him as a grad student.

A curiosity I noticed in Argentina, but encounter it here, is the custom of
referring to a male colleague by his last name, a female by her first in
informal conversation.

Choppy

At 10:48 AM 9/23/07, you wrote:
>God bless ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.
>or
>Avast, ye Englishmen!
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_(pronoun)
>
>"Y'all" works better for me.  You might slip ye in as a contraction when
>speaking to a crowd, "What would y'do about that?"  If you use it in the open
>people will think you are a pirate.
>
>The wikipedia section on thou is a real glazer.
>
>On Sunday 23 September 2007 7:53 am, Fernando Vilas wrote:
> > Spanish has a formal and familiar version of "you", and each has a singular
> > and plural.  They were using the plural familiar form, which is very common
> > in Spain, but somewhat less so elsewhere.  And the closest English
> > approximation I've ever come up with for it is "y'all", as opposed to "you
> > sirs".