| >> Poland has honorifics that are probably on par to those in Japan > I'm interested in learning more about this! It's very simple, actually. For strangers, you use the third person and the title « Pan » or « Pani » (Sir or Lady). You avoid pronouns, « The Lady has forgotten the Lady's purse on the table ». For friends, you use the t-form ("ty", thou), and use a diminutive rather than the full name. « Johny, you've forgotten your bag on the table ». For work colleagues, you traditionally use « Pan » or « Pani » with the full form of the first name. « Mister John, the mister's bag is on the table ». This is perceived as old-fashioned, and is increasingly being replaced by the t-form. The v-form has fallen into disuse, as it was promoted by the Communist regime. (The old-fashioned honorifics still exist, but they are only used in administrative correspondence: the only time when you're "the respectable gentleman" is when you need to pay taxes.) |
You left out most of the interesting things.
For example the vocative case is partially dissapearing. Someone from Finland can actually understand this topic, since Finnish has multiple cases - more than in Polish language (meanwhile English has one case and if we try very hard we can squeeze something similar to a case - so let's say it has two).