Look! It's another language post!

So here are some interesting thoughts about using Spanish at work, specifically in how I'm learning to use the many forms of the pronoun "you".

In English, as my husband often likes to complain, we only have one second person subject pronoun: you. In Spanish, there are up to four different ones (depending on your location). There is tú - informal you singular, used for friends and often family members or people younger than you. Then there's usted: formal you singular, used for people older than you, people you don't know, or just generally anyone your supposed to show respect to. Thirdly there's ustedes: that's you plural, for a group of people. In Mexico and much of Latin America, that's it (though some countries, such as Costa Rica have different variations of what they use). If you go to Spain, you also have vosotros: informal you plural, used for groups of people consisting of people you'd call tú.

So in school I had to study all the forms (though not so much the vosotros form). It wasn't until I started teaching the Spanish GED class that I realized how deficient I was in speaking in you plural. I'd never really had to think about whether I was addressing one person or a group: in English I don't have to, and I had never really talked to groups of people in Spanish before. Suddenly I had to constantly remind myself to use uds. instead of the tú form. It took some doing, but I think I've finally got a decent handle on it, including at least most of the irregular commands, which I kept forgetting to use at first. I still get confused going back and forth between group and individual. Then there's nebulous questions that I guess a native speaker would intuitively understand or not care about, like, what subject do I use when one student asks a question, but I'm answering it for/in front of the whole class?

Another thing is that I'm not used to being called "usted" (or, as I functionally shift it in my head, usted-ed). My students at school all call me usted if they address me in Spanish, which is as it should be, culturally. Still, it's weird to me, because I'm not used to it. Sometimes it gives me a vague sense of power, but it also makes me a little uncomfortable because I'm not used to dividing society into two levels of people. I guess in English we do it some by using or not using titles such as Mr. or Mrs. It just feels a little different, I guess, because in English, that differentiation doesn't run all the way down to pronouns....though, if I remember correctly, it used to. (You vs. thou)