Same here. It was a strange concept then, and I still don’t get it.
I grew up in central Indiana, and I never heard any of this until this thread. Believe me, Dad never missed an opportunity to yell at us for something, so he must not have known about it, either.
Come to think of it though, a couple times he called me something that implied that Mom was the dog’s mother…
I fell afoul of this rule a few times as a teenager while being a snotty smartmouth little twit with my mom. I am quite sure I was actively trying to be snarky but hadn’t expected her to call me on it. My mom was German, the language has gendered nouns so her saying was “Who is SHE? SHE hangs on the wall and goes tick-tock”
The thing is, as a kid, you are simply using what you expect to be correct grammar. I don’t know any child that says this out of disrespect. I never heard any kids purposely refer to their mother as “she” to be disrespectful.
Yet another stupid thing to make children feel bad for no good reason. Everyone’s mother is a “she”. Period.
Reminds me of another primary school reader I once saw, where some kids, siblings all, watch the Macy’s Day Parade on their TV–and at the same time, through the windows of their high rise apartment.
We all know how most European languages have familiar and respectful forms for the word “you”. German is no different in this regard but features an interesting additional twist. In early modern times, when the nobility still enjoyed many legal privileges and often wielded manorial legal powers over the farmers who rented their lands and especially the servants who maintained their personal estates, there was also a “disrespectful” level of address, used particularly by aristocrats when addressing servants but likewise used by anyone wishing to show disdain for the person addressed. These were Er for a man and Sie for a woman, declined as as necessary so there were several additional forms of these pronouns. As it happens they’re the same pronouns used for the male and female third persons respectively. I don’t know the etymology of this unless the idea was to address the person as if they themselves weren’t in the room. So addressing a woman as Sie (“She”) was highly disrespectful.
I’d like to read more if you can scrape up a link. My searches came back dry.
Could the cat’s mother allusion be related to the fact that many people seemed to think that all cats were female? So a cat’s mother would be about as much “she” as it would be pissible to be.
Exactly what I was thinking - for reference, southeast born, rural area, 80s baby.
So far, I seem to be the only one whose parents’ used “the cat’s cousin.” This was in Scotland.
Okay, now that is just odd and makes me laugh. If my dad had said that to me I’d be in even worse trouble because I’d have a big old grin on my face. (for the the record, this was never said to us with great seriousness or anger. It was just used to gently illustrate our less than sterling manners and became a family joke long after we’d learned our lesson).
Montreal here, chiming in to say that in our Canadian (Scottish/Irish roots) family, “the cat’s mother” was a familiar character.
Here’s an example, wherein my brother wants to know if our mother has given us permission to stay up late:
My brother (to me; with our mother standing in the same room): Well, what did she say?"
Me: She said she’d think about it.
Our mother (in a sarcastic voice): Who’s SHE? The cat’s mother?
Yes, this was the rule in our family (Polish-American). As far as I can remember, it seemed only to apply to my mother, not my father or anyone else. I once objected that it’s okay to refer to the Virgin Mary as “She”, but the response was “That makes no difference! Your mother is not ‘she’!” When I hear a friend’s kids use “she”, I still have a reflex internal response that it’s quite rude, but I say nothing because I know the issue makes no sense.
My mom’s dead and I still don’t say “she” when I am talking to my dad. I always start the conversation with “Mama” even though there is no way I could be talking about anyone else. I don’t remember anything about cats (billi in Hindi) but it’s possible she might have said it. Regardless, I learned this lesson early.
It was part of a general rule about respectful forms of address/reference, especially in the presence of the people being referred to, and not just for parents.
From Stella Gibbons’s 1993 novel [url="Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - Google Books"Cold Comfort Farm, when the young heroine Flora is visiting the farm servant Meriam to arrange for some laundry services:
Huh I just read that book and didn’t remember that exchange.
I haven’t forgotten you, but I haven’t had a chance to provide a substantive example. Wikipedia does mention it, but doesn’t explain it all that well IMHO.
(After following the link, search page for “Historical predecessors”)
Yup! But it would have been easier to remind yourself of it if I hadn’t screwed up the link.
Why would people use a phrase that they didn’t understand themselves? I really don’t get it. If my mom said… well, she DOES say “Waaall, reckon that’s a horse apiece.”
Now, if I asked “Ma, what does ‘a horse apiece’ mean?” (Oh, wait, I do) And she said “Oh, I have no idea, that’s just something your grandma used to say.” I WOULDN’T SAY IT. EVER.
Until it slipped out because I’d heard it a thousand times growing up. But I’d kick myself and try to quit.
When I was 5 yrs old my mother remarried an English guy, and whenever I refereed to my mother in a sentence as SHE, he would really flip out and yell at me and say something like “WHO??? That’s your mother!!! She is a Cat, you can’t call your mother she!!”
He had other little saying he would tell me all the time, like “Kids are to be seen and not heard” and “Silence is Golden”.
He’s dead now so I don’t have to hear any of that anymore, the silence has been golden, but she is still alive.