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你先夫


dwq

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I was watching HKTV just now and this caught my ears.  One lady in a drama referred to her deceased husband as 我先夫 which I found a bit jarring.  Later another person, when talking to the lady about the same husband, used 你先夫 which made me want to pull my hair out.
 
I thought 先夫, like 家父、先父, etc. is 對人自稱 which doesn't take a 我 in front, exactly because there can be no doubt about whose husband/father the word is referring to (i.e. the speaker's).
 
http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/htm/fulu/cw.htm

 

In another case, another TV station was doing a programme on small homes, and it was asking people to send it photos of their homes, saying:

 

請把你的蝸居的相片寄給我台。

 

It did this in multiple contexts multiple times, each time saying 你的蝸居。

 

I thought 蝸居 is 謙稱 which refers to the speaker's own home when used as a noun.

 

I hope I'm right, and these hasn't become acceptable uses.  Or has they?  Please comment.

 

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To my knowledge, 蜗居 is the word for extremely small houses, basically too small for a person/a family to live in comfortably, but the person/family has no choice because a larger, more fitting house is too expensive. So not so much 谦称 but more a word for a specific, undesirable but 没办法 housing situation. I haven't seen the program you're referring to, but I imagine it's sympathetic to the inhabitants of said 蜗居, not insulting. If, say, you want to make a program on how to do a home make-over for tiny homes, it wouldn't sound strange to me to refer to those homes as 蜗居.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Sorry for the late response.  I was away for a few days.

 

I found this on the net while searching about this topic. I don't know who the author is or his/her qualifications, but I agree with what he/she is saying.

However, I also found this where the author quotes incidents of 你令尊 and the like in literature, so it seems those are not unheard of. Note that even this author says that those are 蹩腳的尊稱 / 拖泥帶水。

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