Dillards 78: Taste the Rainbow

[WiseGirl]

17 hours ago, finnlassie said:

When you're in primary school, it's either first name or "teacher" or "teach" (opettaja, ope). When you advance to secondary, the teachers usually say what they prefer (first name, last name, and/or teacher) or if they give a shit at all. I think it was 50-50 in upper secondary, werther I called teachers by their surname or first name. Think

When I teach preschool I'm Miss (first name) and in middle school (ages    10 -13) I'm Ms. (last name). In all cases I'm frequently called "mom" as well. I have also been called Ms. (First initial of my last name only).

In one school system all female teachers were called Miss and make teachers Mister - no lasr/surnames or first names used.

[marshmallow]

2 hours ago, Smee said:

As I said, high school teachers here are often “Sir” and “Miss”

Non-native speaker of English here. I am curious: when addressing a high school teacher as 'Miss' does that imply that she is not married? 

[Bobology]

4 minutes ago, marshmallow said:

Non-native speaker of English here. I am curious: when addressing a high school teacher as 'Miss' does that imply that she is not married? 

Not necessarily, in my experience. I'm retired now, but I do remember my school days and how kids would get Miss/Mrs mixed up. As an adult I worked in schools and noticed students and staff still doing this. Never once did I hear a woman instructor/staff member correct anyone. The mix-up was so ubiquitous that no one really cared. But we were taught that Miss = unmarried and Mrs = married. Using either one is respectful in a school setting.

[Smee]

19 minutes ago, marshmallow said:

Non-native speaker of English here. I am curious: when addressing a high school teacher as 'Miss' does that imply that she is not married? 

I realise it does seem that way but no, it happens regardless of marital status. I think it’s much like ma’am is in other parts of the world - like, if I dropped something, someone in the street might say “excuse me, Miss?” even if I had my kids with me and my wedding rings in plain view. In a classroom context, it’s oniy when they’re addressing you directly, e.g.

”Miss, can you explain question four again?”

If they’re talking ABOUT you, or differentiating between two teachers in the same room, then marital status comes into it.

student 1 to student 2: “Mrs Smee told us the essay is due on Friday for our class”

student 2: “oh, that’s so unfair, Miss Carter is making us do ours by Wednesday”

or even:

”Hey Miss, did you know Mrs Smee’s class got an extension on the essay? Can we get one too?”

 

edit to add: much like I assume the Duggars would say “dad asked me to do this” not “sir asked me to do this” even if they say “yes sir” when speaking to their father directly.

Edited July 13, 2019 by Smee

[mango_fandango]

I know it’s a cultural thing in parts of America, but I’ve always found sir/ma’am for parents to be way too formal. In Britain you are created a Sir, part of the honours system (eg Sir Patrick Stewart, Sir David Attenborough etc). And ma’am is what you address the Queen as. The first time you speak to her it’s “your majesty” then “ma’am” to rhyme with jam. So maybe it’s because “sir” and “ma’am” mean different things over here. 

In my brother’s secondary school he had to address male teachers as sir. At my secondary school it was just Mr/Mrs/Miss whatever the name was (same with our primary school). 

 

[dharmapunk]

Here in Austria teachers are usually not adressed by their name. They are called "Herr Lehrer" or "Frau Lehrerin". "Lehrer" is teacher, so it means something like Mr. teacher. My 10 year old daughter actually does not remember  all her teachers names when I ask her who I shold go talk to on parent-teacher day. In the old days when my grandma went to school all female teachers were called Fräulein, equivalent to Miss. But that was only because they had to stop teaching after getting married. ( and up until the 1970s women needed their husband's written consent to take up a job outside the home)

[mollysmom]

This is so interesting. One of the biggest reasons that I love FJ so much is the diversity we have. I learn so much about so many other countries/cultures. I absolutely love it! 

[Rachel333]

2 hours ago, mango_fandango said:

I know it’s a cultural thing in parts of America, but I’ve always found sir/ma’am for parents to be way too formal. In Britain you are created a Sir, part of the honours system (eg Sir Patrick Stewart, Sir David Attenborough etc). And ma’am is what you address the Queen as. The first time you speak to her it’s “your majesty” then “ma’am” to rhyme with jam. So maybe it’s because “sir” and “ma’am” mean different things over here. 

In my brother’s secondary school he had to address male teachers as sir. At my secondary school it was just Mr/Mrs/Miss whatever the name was (same with our primary school). 

 

Yeah, I was going to say, I've seen a lot of tv where British schoolchildren call their male teachers "sir," which I don't think is very common in the US. It would feel very formal to me.

In general I just don't think it's common to directly address someone as "sir" like that unless it's someone you don't know. Answering questions with "yes sir/ma'am" is very different.

[zee_four]

6 hours ago, Smee said:

Interesting. I’m curious now as to what the norm is in most African and Asian languages, given that we’ve had a few here share about different European languages and Spanish as used in South America. I have many friends with heritage from various Asian countries and have never heard them call their own parents sir or ma’am but then again they often speak to their parents in Cantonese or Korean or Malay. 

Aunty/Uncle are used as a mark of respect in Australian Aboriginal communities too. 

As I said, high school teachers here are often “Sir” and “Miss”, it occurs to me that Ma’am in general sounds weirdly formal to my ear - even working in retail I think I’d only use Ma’am for a customer over the age of about 60. While sir/miss is a formality in high school, primary school teachers are “Mr <surname>” and “Mrs/Miss/Ms <surname>”. My sister teaches ballet, where she’s “Miss <firstname>”. And then at University, lecturers and professors go back to just being called by their first name, no honorific. If you found out your teachers’ first name at school you’d giggle with your friends but you’d never call them that in class. I’ve never really thought about how incredibly inconsistent our culture is haha.

Auntie and uncle (unko) are honorific in Hawai'ian as well. Everyone is your auntie, unko or cuz regardless of blood relation. Tutu is for grandma/grandpa.

[OyToTheVey]

In Russia/Ukraine/Former USSR countries, teachers are usually addressed with first name and patronymics. So a teacher would be called Marina Ivanovna. Her brother would be Sergey Ivanov. It's the respectful way. No one would every say a first name to a teacher without the patronym. 

[finnlassie]

Now that I think of it, we called some of our teachers with nicknames as well. Nothing insulting, again, it was something the teacher was totally ok with. Most commonly they were formed from the last name, or based on random stories they told. I once forgot our history teacher's name, and said to my friends "you know, mr. hangover pizza (herra darrapitsa)..." .... because if there was ANYONE in the class that hadn't heard the best hangover pizza story, he would spend a sweet 10 minutes explaining it in the exact same manner, never failing any of the details he had told before. Like, he wouldn't just tell what the hangover pizza had. He'd tell the whole damn story of the night.

And yes, a lot of us heard it while still under 18. But he said that the story would be told anyways between the students, so what the hell, he wanted everyone to know the full story anyways to avoid any sort of rumours. Still to this day, I have no idea what those rumours could've even been, since none had surfaced to our knowledge in the history of him recounting the night of the hangover pizza.

Edited July 13, 2019 by finnlassie

[Yaoichan12]

In K-12 school, every adult was Mr. Or Ms. 

Get to college and called my very first professor Ms. And the next day she lectured our small class about how she didn't spend x amount of years getting master's and doctorate to be called Ms. It was Professor or Dr. 

[OyToTheVey]

3 minutes ago, Yaoichan12 said:

In K-12 school, every adult was Mr. Or Ms. 

Get to college and called my very first professor Ms. And the next day she lectured our small class about how she didn't spend x amount of years getting master's and doctorate to be called Ms. It was Professor or Dr. 

I love a person on a high horse. I work with doctors(I work in a pharmacy), so when I call them I make sure to say Thank you Doctor, or something like that. It makes them feel good and I get the prescriptions changed without trouble. A lot of our customers call the pharmacist Doctor too. 

[BrandoBarks]

Born in the 80s in North-Eastern Germany: In Kindergarden we had to call the female educators “Auntie + first name” and use “du” as the informal/personal way of addressing someone (Tante Gudrun, Tante Silvia...). From elementary school through highschool all teachers had to be addressed with Mr./Mrs. last name (Herr Schröder, Frau Lehmann). Now my four year old uses only the first name with his Kindergarden educator (still with “du”) but us parents have to use first name + “Sie” which is the more formal way to speak to someone you don’t know.  

 

[fluffernutter]

My parents were young hippies when they had me. They didn't want me to call them anything other than their first names. I live in a conservative area in PA and teachers and friends looked at me like I was nuts when I addressed my parents by their names instead of mom and dad. Another thing that comes to mind is my favorite teacher ever. She was my cello teacher and I adored her. After I grew up and had kids, my middle child decided to play and my cello teacher's husband, who also plays, became her teacher. I saw my teacher all the time, going to her house for my daughter's lessons. She kept telling me to call her by her first name and to this day I just can't do it!  She will always be Mrs. __ in my mind.  

[PennySycamore]

@mango_fandango,  i was going to ask about the British custom of using Ma'am with the Queen.  Thanks for answering my question before I could ask it!  I read that in either a biography of Queen Elizabeth or maybe in an Esquire article about her in the 70s.  

[Greendoor]

On 7/12/2019 at 12:15 PM, SilverBeach said:

I have a friend I have known for 50 years. Her mother is 93. I cannot bring myself to address her mother by her first name.  Just doesn't feel right. 

My mother told me a story when I was about 10.

Alice Jones grew up in the South.  She graduted, she worked, She was Miss Jones.  Her friends married and had kids and they called her Miss Jones.  They all grew older and she retired.  And the shop keepers and the people in the town called her Miss Jones.  

She was old in a home when a nurse said to her," Miss Jones, may I call you Alice?"  She smiled. "Please."  It was the first time in decades her name had be spoken.

 

 

[viii]

I work at a school and everyone is either Mr Last Name or Miss/Ms/Mrs Last Name. 

I’m a Miss but I regularly get called Mrs. Doesn't phase me. 

[SilverBeach]

The only thing I hate being called by is my ex-husbands' last name. I hyphenated and then legally changed my name back after the divorce. But his name has stuck like glue and still pops up from time to time, without the hyphen even. I hate it when it happens as it triggers a lot of bad memories.

1 hour ago, Greendoor said:

She was old in a home when a nurse said to her," Miss Jones, may I call you Alice?"  She smiled. "Please."  It was the first time in decades her name had be spoken.

That's different than my situation, as the nurse just met this woman when I have known my 93 year old friend's mother since I was a child.  When my mother was in the nursing home, everyone called her Mrs. ___, that seemed to be the protocol. I like it. Once when I took my mom to get glasses, the very young person behind the counter who we had never seen before referred to my mother by her first name and I was livid (mom was chill because she rolled like that).  As in the quoted text, she should have asked before assuming that level of familiarity with an 80 year old woman.  In my culture, that's just not acceptable.

Edited July 14, 2019 by SilverBeach

[Don'tlikekoolaid]

Back in 1971 I took my great great Auntie to this little store, Auntie was 90 yrs old and a retired Osteopath, even at 90 she could break your neck with one hand if she was so inclined.  This one guy, a hippie with no shirt, no shoes and lots of long hair and love beads called her Mom.  She never married or had kids.  She ripped him a new one, I was a little embarrassed but so proud of her, she was one in a million. I still think of that poor guy, he didn’t know what hit him.

So here’s Derick out on a Nepal date night.  My manners can be less than stellar at times but then I don’t post the boring details of my life on the Net.  Maybe his mouth hurts or something from braces coming off? 

Spoiler

 

[JordynDarby5]

18 hours ago, mango_fandango said:

I know it’s a cultural thing in parts of America, but I’ve always found sir/ma’am for parents to be way too formal. In Britain you are created a Sir, part of the honours system (eg Sir Patrick Stewart, Sir David Attenborough etc). And ma’am is what you address the Queen as. The first time you speak to her it’s “your majesty” then “ma’am” to rhyme with jam. So maybe it’s because “sir” and “ma’am” mean different things over here. 

In my brother’s secondary school he had to address male teachers as sir. At my secondary school it was just Mr/Mrs/Miss whatever the name was (same with our primary school). 

 

Like that seen in the King's Speech where Queen Elizabeth explains it to Lionel's wife?

 Myrtle Logue: [sees the Queen at her dining table, stunned] You. You...? 
Queen Elizabeth: It's 'Your Majesty' the first time. After that, it's 'ma'am', as in 'ham'. Not 'ma'am', as in 'palm'. 
 

[finnlassie]

The last school I had my placement at, the teacher of the class I was in had divorced over the summer break, and got snappy at the kids when they called her Mrs instead of Ms. Those kids were used to calling her Mrs for four years already! Like, give them a break, give them time to adjust. Don't just snap at them. Sheesh.

[lumpentheologie]

When I was teaching at a university I asked my students to call me by my first name, but I told them if they were uncomfortable with that they could call me Ms. Lastname, and there were always a few who did that.  Also some of them always ignored what I said and just called me "Professor," which was not accurate (I was a grad student teaching my own classes) but undergrads often think anyone who's teaching them is a professor. 

It's interesting to hear that people still go by Miss/Mrs. Lastname.  I don't know a single woman who goes by anything other than Ms. (unless it's Dr./Prof.) and I thought the older forms were dying out.  I really dislike being called both Miss (seems infantilizing) and Ma'am (seems like you're calling me old).  I wish there were a more neutral term not related to age or marital status.  I recently got a Big Gay Haircut, and when I was ordering at a New York deli the guy behind the counter called me Boss, which I'd never been called before, and had only ever heard men be called.  I liked it, though. 

The du/Sie distinction in German is really a minefield.  In German class we were taught to use Sie with all adults who weren't our fellow students. But this provides no guidance after you're student-aged, and I've recently discovered that some people are offended if you use Sie with them outside of a work setting because it implies that they're old/uptight/uncool. I recently had to take a package to my upstairs neighbors and agonized for a while about whether I should say Sie to them or not. They're my age (mid/late 30s) but they're also the only people in the building with children and they're pretty uptight (they regularly leave passive-agressive notes in the hallway admonishing the rest of us to behave better).  I finally decided that I wouldn't use Sie as a semi-protest against their superiority complex, but it turns out they're on vacation so the whole thing was for nothing. ?

 

[dharmapunk]

24 minutes ago, lumpentheologie said:

 

The du/Sie distinction in German is really a minefield.  In German class we were taught to use Sie with all adults who weren't our fellow students. But this provides no guidance after you're student-aged, and I've recently discovered that some people are offended if you use Sie with them outside of a work setting because it implies that they're old/uptight/uncool. I recently had to take a package to my upstairs neighbors and agonized for a while about whether I should say Sie to them or not. They're my age (mid/late 30s) but they're also the only people in the building with children and they're pretty uptight (they regularly leave passive-agressive notes in the hallway admonishing the rest of us to behave better).  I finally decided that I wouldn't use Sie as a semi-protest against their superiority complex, but it turns out they're on vacation so the whole thing was for nothing. ?

 

I think a good solution for this particular situation might be to go for the informal plural form "euch". i.e. "ich habe ein Paket für euch". (I have a parcel for you) Where I live, this is what we use if we speak to mixed groups, where I would say sie to some and du to others. Since this is a family, the children would be du and the parents either du or sie, so euch would fall somewhere in the middle. (that is, if you can pronounce it, it is a sound that is notoriously difficult for non native spreakers)

[lumpentheologie]

9 minutes ago, dharmapunk said:

I think a good solution for this particular situation might be to go for the informal plural form "euch". i.e. "ich habe ein Paket für euch". (I have a parcel for you) Where I live, this is what we use if we speak to mixed groups, where I would say sie to some and du to others. Since this is a family, the children would be du and the parents either du or sie, so euch would fall somewhere in the middle. (that is, if you can pronounce it, it is a sound that is notoriously difficult for non native spreakers)

Haha, I said "not Sie" in my earlier post because I would have used "euch."  That was because I'm not sure who in the family the package is for, but it's good to know it can be used for mixed groups too, thanks!  

And I do struggle with the soft 'ch' sound but so far people understand me anyway, thank God. 

 

ETA: I don't know what it is about ch sounds that make them hard. My German husband also struggles with the English ch sound, which has led to some hilarious confusion between 'Jesus' and 'cheeses'. 

Edited July 14, 2019 by lumpentheologie