switching between ты and вы

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

I saw a sign the other day, an ad for a cell phone company: "Подключи друга и получите $10."
[Translation: Sign up (2nd person singular) and receive (2nd person plural) ten dollars.]

I know this is ad-speak, but I'm wondering about the grammaticality of this. Does this look wrong to a native speaker?

Also, why are some ads in 2nd person singular and some in 2nd person plural? Is one or the other better?

Comments

[zhp.livejournal.com]

It is plural because the company promises $5 each, or, $10 for the two of you.

[kalaus.livejournal.com]

Right. Sign up a friend and you (the two of you) will get 10 dollars.

[gera.livejournal.com]

Translation: Sing up your friend and [both of you] will get $10.

Plural points out that both will receive $10. Apparently, it was also the idea of using singular in the first part of the sentence - to stress the difference.

Also, why are some ads in 2nd person singular and some in 2nd person plural? Is one or the other better?

It's just a matter of style. Singular talks directly to a person while plural may be either a polite form or talking to the public (rather than a person).

[spiderhood.livejournal.com]

In this particular case I'd translate it as "Sign [you, informal] up and you'll [both] receive teb bucks".

In general, some ads use informal language: "купи!" (buy), "попробуй!" (try out), etc; some use formal (beats me why you keep on calling it "2nd person plural", there's nothing plural about being polite) one: "приходите к нам!" (come to us), "получите бесплатную подписку" (get a free subscription), etc. The decision is made by ad managers or something, I guess.

[zhp.livejournal.com]

Using 2nd person plural or singular also depends on the target audience. If an ad is targeted towards a younger audience (like teens, young adults), or wants to create the image of friendliness, being "one of the guys" - like some beer commercials- it'll use 2nd person singular.

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

I called it 2nd person plural because when you draw the little diagram for verb conjugations, it's on the plural side. It is also historically derived from the plural, even if it's currently used to address only one person (as with English "you").

E.g.
singular plural
1st person получаю получаем
2nd person получаешь получаете
3rd person получает получают

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

Sorry, the spacing didn't work out the way I wrote it. The words were supposed to be in columns, but it didn't post that way.

[kart.livejournal.com]

You sign up a friend and y'all receive $10

[ob-ivan.livejournal.com]

though it's comprehensible, it does look awkward because some words are skipped to reduce the phrase's length so it could be used in the advertisement.

[ob-ivan.livejournal.com]

it's because in html a group of spaces is always regarded as one space. to avoid it you could use &nbsp; (non-breakable space) or a <table> tag. consult the html documentation for more info.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I personally would not rely on Russian ad-speak as on a valuable source of linguistical knowledge, though Russian ads would sometimes dislpay some language trends which wouldn't look so clear otherwise. This is not the case, though. This is just bad ad :)

[russian-bob.livejournal.com]

В провинциальном магазине:
- Дама, что Вы хотела?

(this is untranslatable joke for using ты and вы in Russian)

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

There's another nice example of that from Strugatsky Brothers' "The Troika Tale":
"Ты что же это бюрократию разводите? Ты что же, не видите, какого оно цвета?" ("ты" is ised every time when you expect "вы" here, otherwise it's "why are you cultivating the bureaucracy? Can't you see of what color it is?")

[blinkenlight.livejournal.com]

The words for "friend" and "[an]other" in Russian look similar, so you probably confused them.

друг = friend
другой = [an]other.

The ad speaks about a "friend", not just about "another person".

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

Hmm...yeah. I guess I should take a closer look at some of that stuff. I'm still sorta new to the HTML thing.

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

he he...I like those. :)

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

Thanks to everyone for the comments. I'm not going to try to learn Russian from ads, but it's nice to figure out what's going on around you sometimes. Thanks to everyone who helped me out with figuring this out.

[danvolodar.livejournal.com]

ob_ivan, you are horrible!

[lovimoment.livejournal.com]

I wasn't offended. This is genuinely useful info.

[danvolodar.livejournal.com]

Just kidding. :)