The mystery of the Japanese language

The word temae 手前 is frequently used to refer humbly to oneself: temae-domo no kaisha (our company) or temae-domo no kangae (our opinion), and so forth. But then if our conversational partner starts getting annoying and we can’t stand it anymore, we might bark out “Temē wa nā” (something like, “Listen, you!”). The temē here is the same word 手前 as the humble, polite term of self-reference temae, but pronounced in this rough way and used as a second-person pronoun, there is a remarkably dramatic shift in meaning. A humble way of speaking has been repurposed into an insult.