But for various cultural reasons the "polite" thing to do was to address someone you didn't know well in the plural rather than the singular "Thou" became "rude" when talking to someone you didn't know well, until in English "you" just became universal
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I had someone on a thread the last time this came up talking about how Spaniards like to make fun of Mexican Spanish for coming off as "formal" and "servile" without any introspection as to who beat that into them over the course of centuries
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All these formal servant idioms that are now part of everyday language - "con su permiso" ("with sir's permission", ie "excuse me"), "a su servicio" ("at sir's service", ie "yeah that's me" on the phone)
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Hey, I get your point but I disagree, there are over 20+ Spanish-speaking countries and the ud / tu is not an iron clad formal / informal rule. In my city we use ud with close friends and to denote respect. This is from a native speaker and a Usted user.
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Well yeah it's a language with 500 million speakers so generalizations are problematic I'm really just talking about the history of its evolution, as it was told to me, not what it "objectively" means now
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in real life, in contemporary Spanish is not like that at all, using ud could denote respect or distance but it is not literally the third person. Maybe you are referring to the history behind the UD?
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