Re: Formal and Informal 2nd Person

--- In cybalist@egroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From:
> To: cybalist@egroups.com
> Sent: Saturday, August 05, 2000 1:28 AM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Formal and Informal 2nd Person
>
>
> Nemo wrote:
>
> >...When you speak Latin it may be sometimes
> embarrassing: you have to address e.g. a noble old professor
> with 2nd sg. But in Classical Latin there is simply no other

way.

> English has no 2sg./pl. distinction, so English speakers should

not feel embarrassed (unless they know some foreign languages that
interfere with their Latin).

>
> BTW Swedish used to employ familiar du vs. formal Ni, but the

latter is rarely used nowadays except by elderly people, AFAIK.

>
> Poles often find it embarrassing that English has so few degrees

of politeness. You switch to first-name terms too abruptly, by our
standards. I'm formally "pan (Piotr) Gasiorowski" to a casual
acquaintance, "pan Piotr" to somebody who knows me well but isn't
exactly a close friend, and "Piotr" or "Piotrek" to my friends and
family, colleagues at work, friendly neighbours, etc. It's the
informal-but-polite "pan Piotr" stage that doesn't exist in English.
You can call a person "Mr (William) Fowler", "William" or "Bill", but
not "Mr William".

In English, under certain conditions, he might be addressed as
"Fowler".

Spanish also has "Don Pedro", but the usage is completely different.

Jeff

>
>
> Danny Wier wrote:
>
> > I reckon Polish and Russian polite forms came about via French
> > influence...
>
> Nemo wrote:
>
> I doubt. As Piotr wrote " In Polish, wy (pl.) can be used as a
> polite counterpart of ty (sg.) in conservative rural dialects"
> and, IMHO, conservative Polish rural dialects aren't likely to
> have had contacts with French.
>
> However, rural dialects may conserve polite forms which used to

be standard some time ago. As a matter of fact, "wy" was a polite
form of address in earlier Polish, when "pan" was used exclusively by
the nobly born (and even "pan" was accompanied a verb in the 2pl.:
"co robicie, panie? [what are you doing, my lord?]" as opposed to the
modern "co pan robi?" [what is my lord doing?]). This plural of
respect is pretty old in the Slavic languages. I think it's
ultimately due to late Latin/early Romance influence rather than
modern French.

>
> Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
>
> >There is a classical monograph devoted to T/V (tu/vos) forms

of

> >address by Brown and Hanlon, but I don't remember its
> >bibliographical details. If >anyone's interested I may look

for them.

>
> Nemo wrote:
>
> If it only isn't a trouble for you, I'd be interested.
>
> OK, but it may take some time. My departmental library is closed

this month.

>
> Piotr