English vs. Russian: greeting strangers (and names somewhat)

[John Dunn]

A couple of thoughts on recent correspondence.  It always used to strike me as odd that in Soviet times at least it was possible to complete certain transactions (e.g. changing larger coins for 5-kopeck pieces for the metro) without either party uttering a single word.  As a foreigner, I found this hard to adjust to, even though I could accept that anything I might say served no useful communicative purpose.  Nor did I find it easy to recognise that молодой человек [molodoj chelovek] is (well, subject to the tone of voice) a perfectly polite form of address.

More generally, one way in which Russian differs from English is that in the former language there is a strong preference for using a form of address when speaking to strangers, whether individually or in groups; hence the use of the above-mentioned молодой человек or the untranslatable уважаемые пассажиры [uvazhaemye passazhiry].  And hence the oft-repeated complaints about the absence of a generally acceptable form for addressing those for whom молодой человек or девушка [devushka] are no longer appropriate.  

it also strikes me that English is relatively poor in forms of address and reference.  Not only do we (unless you happen to live in parts of South Yorkshire) fail to distinguish between formal and informal versions of the second person pronoun, but we are also normally restricted to either forename or title + surname, lacking either the range of variations possible with Russian personal names or the vast array of titles available to speakers of, say, German, Polish or Italian.

John Dunn.


John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Address:
Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
40137 Bologna
Italy
Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

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