On formal pronouns

Becca-here-at-work is taking Spanish. She's also got some Latin background, so we've been able to have some good grammatical discussions. Today we got into formal and informal pronouns. Her question: did Latin have formal and informal for the second person?

I didn't recall that it did, particularly. But Romanian (Latin's close relative) uses the second person plural as the second person singular formal, so I wondered if maybe Latin did and I just wasn't remembering it. Because that's what Spanish does, as well: "Como estas tu" becomes 'como esta usted.'

That led naturally into the archaic English formal and informal. "You," back around the Restoration, was rather the more formal construction, but if you were familiar with the person, you'd use "thee" and "thou." And even now English sort of retains a first person formal with the royal we. (As Megan K. said, the only people who can get away with the royal we are kings, editors, and people with tapeworms.) So in the first person, when you want to be formal you make it plural. But you assuredly don't do that in the second person. "O y'all, please hearken unto mine humble plea." No.

It occurred to me that when you want to be very respectful--at least in older English novels--you address them using the third person, with their title. "How is my lady this morning?" "Would Your Highness consider such-and-such?"

Isn't that interesting?