I had a recent conversation with a friend about the impossibility to convey the nuances expressed in languages that employ the familiar, the less familiar, and the formal modes people use to address each other and translate this into ones -- such as English -- that do not. Having grown up with Hungarian as my native tongue, one using such distinctions emphatically, I was accustomed to this; the French "tutoyer" each other or not; so do the Germans. On a trip to Bali many years ago I was told by local people of the several ways in which they address each other, each one indicating a level of class -- or rather, in that instance, caste -- differences that keep the social relationships among them constantly in the forefront of every interaction.

Much of literature written in such address-intensive languages uses it to express personal or class inter-relationships among the protagonists. Many plot lines hinge on the moment lovers suddenly use the informal "you". Or one of them does and the other doesn't. There are marriages depicted where the couples speak formally to each other throughout their lives; sometimes switching to the familiar in intimate moments, sometimes not even then, and this tells volumes about who they are. Dialogues between employer and employee, master and servant are fraught with meaning, simply by using the formal or informal address. In Hungarian, there are three forms, and the very delicate difference between the more or the less formal ones can tell the whole story by showing respect, affection, contempt or something in between among the participants in a conversation. Translated into an "egalitarian" language such as English, these delicate relationships need description by different means, lengthening the process and often missing the point. In reverse, the nuanced relationships in translated English novels require other means of depiction, for the simple indicator of the familiar/unfamiliar is not there.