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Should the US military make it it protocol to have have its members address their superiors as sir?  


Varysblackfyre321

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13 hours ago, lacuna said:

There's always the option of removing both terms entirely. There's no equivalent to "sir" or "ma'am" in the Norwegian language (in this context at least), and we get by fine.

 

Subtitling military/police movies or shows often gets extremely clunky because of this.

 

Yeah I agree it’s reasonable. Though I wonder if/when such a thing will happen. 

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On ‎1‎/‎31‎/‎2019 at 12:36 PM, BigFatCoward said:

In the police it's Guv or boss. Both gender neutral.

I just finished reading a long series of books (17) about a detective inspector in Oxford (fiction) and it took a couple of books to get used to her DS and DC calling her "guv" all the time and using it like we do "sir" like as a positive acknowledgement.  "Jones, take care of that"  "Guv."

Now I want to call my boss "guv" all the time, but he already thinks I'm a bit weird

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On 2/1/2019 at 7:21 AM, lacuna said:

There's always the option of removing both terms entirely. There's no equivalent to "sir" or "ma'am" in the Norwegian language (in this context at least), and we get by fine.

 

Subtitling military/police movies or shows often gets extremely clunky because of this.

 

I'm for this solution. While "ma'am" does perhaps carry the baggage of preconceived social and gender notions, calling every officer "sir" just feels like avoiding the problem. Can we come up with a new term that conveys respect without being limited to specific gender identities?

I submit "Lao" from the Mandarin for "old." It is used as a respectful prefix when referring to someone senior to you.

Anyone else have one?

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