european languages are most (or even only) familiar with the distinction in the 2nd person pronoun [English being a major exception since it uses only you].
in a previous post I demonstrated the pronouns in Indonesian, at least how it is used in Jakarta.
Indonesian (or Malay) is known for its relatively easy grammar. yet in this post I'll point out to something in Indonesian which can be quite intricate for those who are familiar only to european languages.
as is clear from the examples, the pronouns for «me, my, I» in european languages do not change according to the level of politeness.
in Indonesian, the pronoun doesn't change whether it's an object, a subject, or acts as a possessive pronoun; thus saya can mean me or my or I (examples in previous blogpost).
yet interestingly, Indonesian uses a different pronoun for me/my/I depending on who you're speaking to.
saya is the most polite/neutral form, aku is slightly more intimate, and while guä is quite widespread among peers, yet when used wrongly, it may end up being rude and/or vulgar. a similar case is perhaps the use of vos in Chile [yet again, unlike Indonesian, vos is a pronoun referring to the addressee.].
each of the sentence below means:
she/he* knows that I..
yet you do not say (3) to someone older than you that you respect.
it's interesting how differently languages "think". I often ask myself how much it affects the way their respective speakers (or understanders in case of a passive knowledge) think as well.
another example is the genderlessness.
some of you have perhaps noted that dia in Indonesian (or Malay) means both her/she and him/his/he. but I'll save it for another post. ;-)
ps: in German you could actually replace mich/ich with meine Wenigkeit. but its use is quite rare.
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