Wide context

Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)

/^t/Terms of address can be divided into two main groups. One of them includes "v-forms", that is the forms that are to be used while addressing people we know well, our subordinates, or children. "Sie-forms" are reserved for addressing strangers and people with higher social status than that of a speaker. These forms and their usage have changed during the development of languages. Such changes happen gradually and to be anchored in a given language, most of its speakers must feel it necessary. Therefore, any attempts made by one social group to influence the pattern of terms of address are doomed to failure.