Oh, ha, I just saw this exchange, after my comment on pronouns above.
I guess a modern English equivalent would have to do with first name use - i.e. Posa switching from "prince" or "your highness" to "Carlos"? Because I can't think of a way to convey the higher degree of intimacy otherwise. And yet it's still not the same, since everyone is so quickly on first names these days.
Agreed. It's a thorny one. I've been dealing with it through a combination of 1) switching between titles and first names, 2) explicitly calling attention to the use of informality where surprising, 3) having intimate address be an exception rather than the rule. If (2) were not an option, you'd probably have to trust the reader to pick up on (3). Of course, you also have the option of making the whole discourse in English be more informal when the characters are on familiar terms, and that can help too, although it's not a perfect 1:1 with pronouns. Sometimes, you just have to accept that something will be lost in translation.
Tolkien had his characters switch to "thee" in LOTR 3 times that I can think of off the top of my head: Faramir and Éowyn (intimate), Sam and Rosie (intimate), Denethor and Gandalf (contemptuous). In commenting on the text (in the appendices, iirc?), Tolkien elaborates on the complexities of what his characters were really doing in their native dialects, and how very imperfectly he could render that in English using "thou", and how that still sends the wrong message to many a modern reader, to whom "thou" is archaic and therefore formal.
Incidentally, in modern German, you can call someone by their first name and still use "Sie", not "Du"
See, intermediate levels of formality like this fascinate me, especially when it's not just the binary of "Person X is formal/informal with Person Y," but when characters move fluidly along the continuum according to context. I'm trying to do as much as I can with that in English in my fic (I remember wrestling with it in a Tolkien fanfic once as well, and leaving an author's note at the end explaining my choices and pointing out that even the great Tolkien had to throw up his hands too.)
Oh, cahn, while we're doing Fritz anecdotes: his staff were definitely required to Sie/vous the royal Italian greyhounds. I imagine this was normal for European royalty.
Re: Fredersdorf
I guess a modern English equivalent would have to do with first name use - i.e. Posa switching from "prince" or "your highness" to "Carlos"? Because I can't think of a way to convey the higher degree of intimacy otherwise. And yet it's still not the same, since everyone is so quickly on first names these days.
Agreed. It's a thorny one. I've been dealing with it through a combination of 1) switching between titles and first names, 2) explicitly calling attention to the use of informality where surprising, 3) having intimate address be an exception rather than the rule. If (2) were not an option, you'd probably have to trust the reader to pick up on (3). Of course, you also have the option of making the whole discourse in English be more informal when the characters are on familiar terms, and that can help too, although it's not a perfect 1:1 with pronouns. Sometimes, you just have to accept that something will be lost in translation.
Tolkien had his characters switch to "thee" in LOTR 3 times that I can think of off the top of my head: Faramir and Éowyn (intimate), Sam and Rosie (intimate), Denethor and Gandalf (contemptuous). In commenting on the text (in the appendices, iirc?), Tolkien elaborates on the complexities of what his characters were really doing in their native dialects, and how very imperfectly he could render that in English using "thou", and how that still sends the wrong message to many a modern reader, to whom "thou" is archaic and therefore formal.
Incidentally, in modern German, you can call someone by their first name and still use "Sie", not "Du"
See, intermediate levels of formality like this fascinate me, especially when it's not just the binary of "Person X is formal/informal with Person Y," but when characters move fluidly along the continuum according to context. I'm trying to do as much as I can with that in English in my fic (I remember wrestling with it in a Tolkien fanfic once as well, and leaving an author's note at the end explaining my choices and pointing out that even the great Tolkien had to throw up his hands too.)
Oh,