“Would you like a copy?” heart“? » the seller told me at a stand at the Pacífico market in Madrid a few days ago, after I gave her my bank card. POV (acronym, yes: Point of Sale Terminal). I was surprised by “heart“Because I buy a hundred in the wind on this stand variants (DLE: “Fruit or vegetable marinated in vinegar”), but I hardly have any other conversation with the shopkeeper other than the one referring to my order. At the fishmonger, at the butcher’s shop or in the fruit shop in the same market, no one uses such an affectionate nickname, and generally customers my age treat us, as well as you, with a certain distance.
When I say I was surprised, I’m not saying I was surprised in a bad way, understand me. In the world of commerce, there is a wide variety of treatment between employees and customers, and we are sometimes surprised by the familiarity and others You; some the “heart» or the “Dear» or the “love“and others”Sir“dry and distancing.
One day, in a well-known supermarket, with many stores throughout Spain, I asked a cashier if she had clear instructions from the company on how to address customers, unequivocal rules and universal, and she told me no, that each cashier spoke to each customer as they saw fit, and not necessarily to everyone in the same way.
The thing about You and the You goes into the professions. In journalistic editorial offices, for example, the first thing we usually teach a recently arrived intern is that internally everyone is on a first name basis, including the director, and that externally, in an interview for publication for example, one should approach the one you always interview even if you have a lot of contact and trust with him.
Many years ago I witnessed a very curious scene in the central editorial office of the German newspaper Picturethen to Hamburg. A newly appointed leader joined the leaders meeting for the first time and, from what my interpreter told me live, he addressed You to the director, amid the laughter and jokes of the rest of the audience. The director, who was a lynx, neither applauded nor corrected the newbie, but rather reacted quickly by ordering a report on the use of the You and the You in the most varied aspects of German life: commerce, education, businesses, sports stadiums, temples… It was published the next day and was titled something like “Why do I treat the boss like you if I’m trying to please God.” in the Our Father?
In Peninsular Spanish, nicknames such as heart either Dear either love We reserve them for our couples. However, none of them appear in this sense in the Dictionary of the Spanish Language (DLE) of the academies. Yes it comes Dear. “MU as an affectionate nickname to address or refer to a person. My dear. “My paradise” says the meaning 7 of this entry.
I read a long time ago, I don’t remember where, that Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, lovers for fifty years and one of the most fertile intellectual couples of all time, were talking about you. I couldn’t confirm it now. Yes, I saw that he addressed the nickname to her Beavermaking a play on words between his last name and the English term Beaver, beaver in French and Spanish.
Castor sounds great, it works as an affectionate nickname for both men and women. For a couple or for a store customer and for a couple. I hope it becomes fashionable, darlings.
