gramina: Photo of a stalk of grass; Gramina references the graminae, the grasses (Default)
gramina ([personal profile] gramina) wrote in [personal profile] tree_and_leaf 2009-05-19 11:05 pm (UTC)

So I went looking :)

There are three levels of formality in some languages, per Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutoyer), including Basque, Bengali, and Hindustani. It also looks like some languages that make a formal/informal distinction do share a tradition of toasting for the initiation of the use of the informal/intimate form.

It looks like many of the Eastern languages are more complex and/or approach the question differently enough that they don't really quite fall into these divisions -- though I'm not a speaker and not a linguist, so I could certainly be wrong.

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