We often use i courtesy pronouns“she” or “you”, when speaking to someone we don’t know, as a sign of respect and good manners. But where does the custom of calling “lei” and “voi” come from?? From far away, precisely from the times of the courtly culture ofEarly Middle Ages (around the 11th and 12th centuries), in which the “voi” was used to avoid a direct reference to the person we were talking to and with whom we were not familiar or familiar, because in that case calling the “tu” seemed rude. Using this pronoun in fact allowed a certain distance (sometimes also deference) between the speaker and those in front of him, thus maintaining a formal and deferential tone, and this is still the case today. The “she”, which is the evolution of the “you”, only arrived in the eighteenth century.
The custom of giving the lei has returned to the fore following the annoyance expressed by the television presenter Teo Mammuccari in being interviewed with the third person by Francesca Fagnanihost of the well-known TV show Beasts.
As you can imagine, both names were used mainly with high society people or authoritysuch as rulers, nobles, aristocrats and religious figures. And before these pronouns there were adjectives like “your lordship”, “your highness”, “your grace”, “excellence” which today seem so high-sounding and are now obsolete.
In those times – and for many centuries to come – to express the papal dignity and the majesty of the role the Pontiff instead used the plural maiestatisthat is, talking about himself in the first person plural (we) rather than in the singular. This use was abandoned completely in the last century with the pontificate of Paul VI (1963-1978), who preferred to use simpler and more direct language, getting closer to the faithful.
With the Renaissance the “you” also extended to non-aristocratic people in almost all parts of Italyconsolidating with the acquaintances and strangers with whom one had to deal. Nowadays, apart from the central areas of Italy (especially the rural ones) of Abruzzo and Ciociaria, where the “voi” and the “lei” have never established themselves, only the “lei” is now used, especially in Northern Italy . Only in Sicily has the “vossia”, a contracted form of the courtesy pronoun, remained among the elderly.
The use of “she” however is a more modern formwhich developed in the eighteenth century as an evolution of “you”. The “she” immediately proved to be suitable for addressing others, but without the connotation of distance and superiority that distinguishes the “you”. This pronoun change is important, because it shortened the distances between social classesdemocratizing this form of verbal respect.
Nowadays it is used less and less calling “lei”, especially among young people, but it is still widely used in formal and work contexts, being an important part of Italian linguistics.
In case you were wondering, yes, courtesy pronouns also exist in other languagesespecially of Latin origin (you in French, usted in Castilian e voice in Portuguese), but also in Russian, with the pronoun vyi. The English are the most democratic of all, in this sense: the she does not exist, it just exists youand it applies to everyone without distinction.
