Questions for native speakers of Spanish, French, German, Russian, Japanese, etc.

[loveschak]

This is primarily a question for speakers of languages with grammatical distinctions between formal and informal speech, such as the pronoun-pairs tú/usted, tu/vous, ты/Вы, du/Sie or the dizzying system of Japanese honorifics.

Which forms do you use when addressing an animal? I don't mean a mythical talking animal like Osiris or Mickey Mouse, but a

Comments

[sonatanator]

According to my cousin, in Japan children address animals formally (Mr. Cow), but use a different form of address when giving something to a dog than the formal address used when giving something to a person. Apparently, her japanese teacher had a dog mask and would put it on, and have students carry out pretend conversations with him as a dog.

Unrelatedly, I hope you'll be around next weekend? I should be in town from Thursday or Friday until Monday or Tuesday.

[arturis]

I'm not a native Spanish speaker, any more than you are, but my limited experience of native Spanish-speaking media and culture is that the common thing is to use the informal form and often add diminutives to names or titles. But I don't know what context that media has in the broader culture.

[antyjersey]

loveschak