Re: Formal and informal 2nd person

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 my country, there's only one person that could be addressed in this way, title plus first name, and that is the Queen.  :o)
 

BTW Swedish used to employ familiar du vs. formal Ni, but the latter is rarely used nowadays except by elderly people, AFAIK.

It's hardly used by anyone, because you will either sound ridiculous or condescending. Modern Swedish is perhaps the most title-less of all the languages discussed here. You never call anyone Mister (herr) except as a way of showing contempt. I think the total loss of formal speech was part of the sixties revolution, which, like all cultural trends, was borrowed from abroad: London, Paris, the USA. We just seem to have gone a little bit further than the rest of you. The French had barricades in the streets in 1968, which we hadn't, but they kept their vous and their formal ways of speech (the differences in what is considered normal are amusing: the most courteous letter I've ever got was from a French internet bookshop saying "Thank you" for my order).

 

The idea of showing respect by addressing someone in the plural was borrowed into our language from German in the 13th and 14th centuries. The 2nd plural pronoun ni may seem odd to people who know the IE family of pronouns: it is just a couple of hundred years old and it has an unusual etymology. The old 2nd plural pronoun was I (with a capital I to confuse English speakers) and the corresponding verb form ended in -en. Somehow this -n broke free and attached itself to I: expressions like gingen I (you went) turned into gingo ni. The new pronoun, ni, was considered vulgar or condescending, it did not become a sign of respect until the early 20th century, when it replaced I. Though not everybody appreciated being addressed in the plural even then: there's a classic cartoon of a tramp addressed with ni. He responds, utterly disgusted: " 'Ni!' D'you think I've got fleas?"

Hakan