It was the way people of certain classes talked to each other.

Communication was much more formal back then, generally speaking. No child would speak to an adult without calling them ma'am or sir. No child would ever use an adult's first name. And adults who didn't have a close relationship would not call each other by their first names, unless one of them had a higher social status. Higher status people could use lower status peoples' first names.

Ohhh that makes sense. And it wasn’t just a European thing?

Do you love the book?

>Even in bitter arguments, they would call each other sir, or madame, or use the other’s respective title.

So, here's the thing with French: the language has both informal/singular (tu) and formal/plural (vous) forms of "you," which does not exist in English but is kind of a big deal in French. (Some parts of the US do kind of have a plural form of "you" with "y'all," but that's not relevant here.)

This poses kind of a big translation problem when translating French into English. One solution is to convey the respect of "vous" by having the character instead address the other by an honorific (like sir, madame, etc.).

I can't say for sure that this is what your translator is doing in all cases, but it's likely. Sometimes the translator will address their handling of tu/vous in a translator's note at the front. That's not to say that the characters don't also use honorifics in the original text, but it might not be to the extent that you're seeing in your translation (though they are being just as respectful, just in a way that can't literally be translated to English).

......But that interesting tidbit aside, Dumas was probably not going for extreme realism. He wanted his characters to sound smart and cool and to make everything more heightened and dramatic, to say nothing of the need to streamline dialogue to make it readable and compelling in fiction. Most of the characters in Monte Cristo speak much more eloquently then is historically accurate. (But authors do this all the time, in every genre, so it's not a bad thing.)

Courtesy was key, especially in the upper classes - it was deemed that the better your conduct and manner of speech, the better your income/education/worthiness was. And if you were noble, your title was expected to be used - for instance, it wasn't unusual for a Duke to be addressed as Duke, not merely Your Grace or the title's location (i.e., the Duke of Cambridge was often addressed as Lord Cambridge, or just Cambridge among his peers and fellow members of his class).

Cultured tones, courtesy, formality - those marked the gentry and aristocracy. Rural accents were considered gauche also.

Ahh I’m learning much about French society just from reading this book. Yeah, I was thinking that Dumas probably was making the dialogue more “dramatic”.

It’s also just the choice of words and how they are arranged.

Ex: “oh my dear albert, what vexes you?” pray i entreat you to answer me…” lol

I do love the book. And it was true in the United States. Even when I was a girl, back in the 60s, I was expected to address adults as sir or ma'am. And I only used their first names if they gave me permission.

"Pray I entreat you to answer me" does seem unnecessary. Why ask a question otherwise?

And before anyone mentions rhetorical questions - like my own above - I think those are generally implicitly understood to be rhetorical based on context. I doubt people didn't understand that concept back then, so I do wonder why they would say that, specifically.

They didnt! i made that up as an example bc I didnt have one readily available from the book. LOL

Shows my ignorance..

Oh, heh. Well, now I feel silly.

Why feel silly?? You made a valid observation;)

...just want to add, the date of translation makes a difference too... a book that was translated yesterday will certainly use English differently from one that was translated in 1900.

That’s how I was raised in the 70’s and 80’s.

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As an example in English, Pride and Prejudice is a good one. Men and women didn’t call each other by their first names until they were engaged and often still used sir or Madam even in a fight

People were touchy about honour and respect and due acknowledgment of rank, so address was important. Also, it was still a time when people put real effort into speech - political speeches and sermons could go for hours (and people listened!), rhetoric was taught and had an effect, a reputation for wit could take you a long way, and there were venues (eg Parisian salons) where fluent argument carried great social cachet. So yes, people did speak like that.

I feel like people were more eloquent in older times. Look at these quotes from boys who fought in the US Civil War, unless they were enhanced by whoever recorded them:

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/children_civilwar/child_soldiers.cfm

>Day after day and night after night did we tramp along the rough and dusty roads ‘neath the most broiling sun with which the month of August ever afflicted a soldier; thro’ rivers and their rocky valleys, over mountains—on, on, scarcely stopping to gather the green corn from the fields to serve us for rations…. During these marches the men are sometimes unrecognizable on account of the thick coverings of dust which settle upon their hair, eye-brows and beard, filling likewise the mouth, nose, eyes, and ears.

-some random 16 year old confederate soldier

My parents tried it in the 90s but all the adults found it weird

> So, here's the thing with French: the language has both informal/singular (tu) and formal/plural (vous) forms of "you," which does not exist in English but is kind of a big deal in French. (Some parts of the US do kind of have a plural form of "you" with "y'all," but that's not relevant here.)

All romance languages have an informal pronoun, "you", and a formal pronoun, "vous", to address people. English used to have it too if I'm not mistaken, as "thou" was the informal "you" and "you" was actually formal.

As for characters' eloquence, fully agree. It also gets worse/better depending on your preference the further back you go in French, Spanish, Italian. Troubadours wrote incomprehensible poetry for the average person nowadays, Dante made literal homeless people speak the highest form of language expressions. I honestly like it a lot, but that's just me. I think it can be an acquired taste for other people.

I love the dialogue in this book. It’s beautiful.

When I read Gogol's Dead Souls I had two different translations on hand. The translation from the 1950s was simply much better written, but unfortunately had omissions.

You happen to have picked on a French formula that's still used in formal letter writing. Je vous prie... I pray you to excuse me, or whatever. Je vous en prie... Is translated thank you but the formula is roughly more like I pray you.

Yea they had both a long time ago, German kept Du/Sie.

Same with Dutch, but Dutch is much further on the path to unification of the two, German not so much.

Also both German and Dutch are moving towards only using the informal jij/je/Du instead of English which went with the formal as the standard form.

In German the two are still used pretty much, and you‘ll have twenty year olds saying Sie to other twenty year olds in formal settings. While in Dutch it‘s virtually disused under forty.

Also in German formal Settings there‘s still some rules about the higher ranking person offering the informal first before those get used like again in a business context, whereas in Dutch the change is basically fluid, going to informal from formal ‚on your own‘.

Though it very much depends on individual culture, like the German internet does not use Sie. Unless you got an utterly clueless lunatic on eBay Kleinanzeigen thinking they are being disrespected.

Same way that I’ve never had any complaints for just using the informal at work for anyone under 40 either.

And meeting someone outside of business/bureaucracy going informal is pretty much standard, unless it‘s a 90 year old neighbor still running on the old ruleset.

Also I find the informal variant extremely disrespectful (and am not alone with that interpretation) because it creates a massive ‚distance‘ and is usually used in dehumanizing context anyway.

Even today French can be much more flowery than English has been for some time. For example formulas to use in formal letter writing seem very elaborate in comparison. Plus people are much more likely to say sir or madam in a casual exchange. Merci, Madame. To which the reply is Je vous en prie.

All Slavic and Germanic languages except for English and Swedish have it too.

I think people with more technical knowlege have given some great points, but as someone with more of a historical and less literary background I did have to engage a part of my brain more used to intepretating primary source texts. It helped Listening to it on audiobook (great public domain recording) but the way dialogue was structured took a bit of getting used to.

I think it would be interesting to see a more recent translation since this does kind of all go back to it being a french work originally. While more collequial modern langauge in a translation would make it flow easier, I ended up finding some of the 19th century-isms really charming. Especially the parts in the story talking about weed were kind of awesome to hear people talk about how dank Cristos hashish edibles were in 19th century parlance was kind of awesome

Times have changed. As a child in 1960s England first names were not so common. I would never have dreamed of usung an adult's first name without a courtesy Auntie, first and at work it was a very modern thing to be on first name terms with someone senior at work. I remember there being an article about it on the news.

When we visited the US when my children were young they had to use the word Miss before an adult's first name.

A good note on the dramatic side is each chapter being a newspaper release originally, which makes the chapters flow really well for me and be nice and dramatic as he wanted folks to buy the next periodical to read it

It's still a thing today in America. Less so since we're much more informal as a culture now, but if you go to an older/more conservative company, you'll see this at play. Also in the military it's pretty common for senior ranks to refer to junior ranks by first name and only use rank/last name in formal scenarios or if someone's getting an ass-chewing.

It's worth noting that Dumas was paid by the line, giving him a reason to expand his dialogue a bit.

A lovely set of fantasy novels done as a Dumas pastiche are the Khaavren romances by Steven Brust. The Phoenix Guards corresponds to The Three Musketeers, Five Hundred Years After corresponds to Twenty Years After, etc. I haven't found The Baron of Magister Valley yet, but I'm told it corresponds to The Count of Monte Cristo.

One of the interesting things here is that these books are set in the world of the Dragaeran Empire, a setting where Brust has been writing his long-running Vladimir Taltos series for decades and which, um, do *not* share that writing style (these books have been described as being written in "first person smartass"). The Khaavren romances are supposed to be historical novels which exist in the world (and approximate time) of the Taltos books.

Brust *loves* playing around with structure and voice and the like. One book in the Taltos series, which revolves around characters from the two series interacting, is divided into three parts, with the first part written in the Taltos voice and the third part written in the Khaavren voice. It's really odd "hearing" these characters speak in the other style.

So you everyone just uses the informal and it’s cool, but you personally find this very offensive?

Back when people could be polite and disagree.

English does but isn't emphasized as much as in the romance languages. Also probably why the non-binary movement is so big in the US, also.

What does non-binary have to do with distinction between singular and plural “you”?

That's one of their reasonings for the non binary pronouns.

Identifying by they/them instead of he or she.

Troubadours wrote in Provençal, not French. Their language is still pretty easy to understand for a modern Provençal or Catalan speaker.

No it isn’t. Gendered pronouns have nothing to do with 2nd person plural one.

None of that has anything to do with the polite version of “you”. Those are genders of third person personal pronouns. The “tu/vous” distinction is specifically about the 2nd person pronoun and how it changes in singular vs. plural. 2nd person pronoun is not gendered.

You will find in Boswell's book on Dr Johnson that Johnson habitually uses 'Sir' even when being really, really rude and verbally vicious. "Your wife, sir, while pretending to run a bawdy house is actually a receiver of stolen property'. (1709-1784)

We would only use their first name with a title before it, such as "Miss Alice".

Yep, and all of my adult relatives got the appropriate title. Aunt Ann, Uncle Andy. To this day, many of my own niblings call me Aunt kalysti.

All very interesting information, thank you.

Personally, I can speak for romance languages and English because those are the ones I currently speak abd have an insight on their culture.

English is the least formal in pronouns, but this only shifts the burden of formality to the whole rest of the phrase with specific verbs or constructions preference in a formal setting, which adds subtlety and nuance but also makes it harder to master than, say, French where it's a pretty straightforward distinction, though of course you still have to modulate your tone and language to a certain degree.

Spanish is nore forgiving than French linguistically, not as much culturally as you can still feel the old dons culture of respect in lots of Spanish speaking countries, so you need to tread carefully with your language and mostly with your actions so as not to be rude.

Italian is kind of a mixed bag. The distinction used to be very similar to French with "tu" being informal "you", and "voi" being formal "you". It's very old fashioned though as nowadays people use "lei", 3rd person pronoun, to express formal "you". I'd say most of the rules you mentioned in German culture apply to Italian culture too. There's generally a shift to more informal language, but in business, bureaucracy, university, government, and anything professional really, you're strongly advised to be formal. Good etiquette suggests you refer formally to older people and superiors, strangers too, especially the older you are. Older people tend to be much more formal and keep it that way until they have a close relationship with the person they're speaking to, though back in the days they would never have shifted to informal language even in this case. If you're on the younger end, you generally should never switch to formal language unless prompted by the older person. Younger generations tend to forgo most formal rules apart from the basics, and this contributes to generational divide as older generations think poorly of this kind behaviour.

Personally, I too think people shouldn't just jump to informal as hastily and unprompted as they do, not because I'm keen on social hierarchies based on age, merit, or career. I just think specific settings require a certain behaviour, composure, and decorum. And as someone generally distrustful of others and keen on his personal space, I'm also not fond of the implication of closeness informal language has.

Also thinking about when Dumas was living, he was in an odd epoch where the old guard had come back to power after the French Revolution. The upper classes had every thing to prove and desperately wanted to keep the lower classes down so were insisting on status things like language. Dumas himself was not that secure underneath either with his father being metisse and himself being illegitimate.

Interestingly there is still a class of 'bourgeois' who live like that here. They have arranged marriages between them selves and still use very formalised language. They also keep the divisions between themselves of what lineage you come from too. There has been a move against it, especially by young women who can be living in very restricted circles with limited life options. Somewhat easier for guys of course who have the mistress option.

I didn't realise that he was writing for magazines just like Dickens, so like someone on this thread said about no wasted chapters, when you publish in episodes you have to keep up a certain pace every single time. No wonder he wrote a ripping yarn.

I am not a historian or a time traveler ( but I’d love to be a time traveler) but I’ve read a lot of old books. In those days they had very strong ideas about manners, about class status, and about personal honor. There were rules about how you addressed someone even in bitter disagreements. Insults were common but there were lines you could not cross. Not recognizing someone by their name and title was deliberately disrespectful and rude in a way that demanded “ satisfaction” …. In essence when someone crossed that line and insulted your honor the rules of civil society demanded you duel, and duels were deadly affairs.

Tell them that. Not me. You misunderstood what I was saying, anyway.

You misunderstood what I was saying and i have no invested interest in trying to explain it to you. Idgaf about the topic enough to care either way.

Not really a crazy take. I have had three friends who are Spanish speakers, for instance, who found formal language directed at them disrespectful because it's like "I don't know you". There's a certain "distance" that can be read as disrespect or insult, there.

I'm not sure, because I don't speak the languages the other replier knows about, but the "distance" they are talking about could be that the informal version has a dehumanizing context like calling someone else "it" instead of "they/he/she". Languages evolve, so as these languages evolve there's going to be a wide range of discourse on it.

In French: Veuillez agréer, Madame, Monsieur, l'expression de mes sentiments les plus distingués.

In English: Sincerely,

God bless you. These sound amazing.

Some of those novels were published in newspapers as a series. Writers got paid by lines, not by the book. So they fluffed up the dialogues.

Exactly

We did have it in Sweden but it fell out of fashion mid 1900's, now people will look at you funny if you use the formal/plural "ni" when speaking to someone. Unless it's the king, that's the one exception.

Oh well, at least for the King then :)

It's a bit regional though. In Flemish (Belgian) Dutch, the formal "u" is used significantly more than in the Netherlands (though still not to the extent that the French use it).

It was a bit jarring for me when serving personnel in a restaurant in the Netherlands immediately addressed me as "jij".

The duels are so interesting to me. How it was just a common thing back thing apparently.

I’m French and while I haven’t yet read The Count of Monte Cristo I read mostly 19th century authors and it is common for characters in books of that time to address each other as “madame” and “monsieur” so it is likely in the original text and wasn’t added in translation simply to convey the formality of “vous”.

French literature can be so formal, not all of it but a lot, I have read novels written in the first half of the 20th century where couples who live together use the formal “vous” to each other.

They were superficially polite and beastly behind it.

He was paid by the word when publishing it as a serial. This was a good way to up the word count.

I guess we all misunderstood you then lol. “They/them” is in use because English doesn’t have a gender-neutral singular pronoun. If we did, we would use it. Since we don’t, we use the plural gender-neutral term (and we have always done this when the gender of the singular subject is unknown, too, not just for non-binary people).

This, as others have tried to tell you, has nothing to do with a language having a formal versus non-formal word for “you” (which typically comes in both singular and plural forms).

Yeah, bear in mind that a lot of older works have what reads today as pretty stilted language, too, and it takes a bit of getting used to.

Edit: also, English is a very compact language, but there's also the lack of formal cases, so translation is kind of a whole thing.

Having grown up in the American South, this kind of speech is still in use. There's a fine art to politely telling someone off in a voice suitable for church.

You are no longer the Knights who say "Ni"?

well, well, well. Try calling someone you don't know very well, "du" in German, rather than the Sie and see what happens?

Sure you know some Romance languages, or say you do. I speak, read 7, including Deutsch & ancient pharoanic Khemetan. and can translate more simply by having a good lexicon . That comes in handy with Scandivanian lingo, esp. in genealogy. russki, as well.

The HUGE point you miss about Inglischen is that we have NO gender for not biological nouns. Romance languages, for port or door, have gender. And must match 100k's of nouns with articles and 100K's of adjectives with the gender. Which adds mistakes & processin time.

Nouns in English outside of biologically, have NO gender, makin Ingles 70% more efficient than all romance languages & some like Deutsch which do.

Put Dat fact in yer pipe and smoke it. Dat huge, vast efficiency is why English wins, globally.

> Dumas was probably not going for extreme realism.

He was also padding the word count.

A lot of old books were published this way. I think Dickens was published in serial, too.

I always think about it whenever I'm watching netflix show episodes that end with a teaser that make you want to watch the next one.

What part of the chapter do you have in mind? Let me know a paragraph or two, and I will describe the original for you.

I cannot vouch for the truth of this, but Steven Brust wrote a series of fantasy books that openly mimicked the Count of Monte Cristo. In his afterword, he claimed that Dumas wrotein this particular formal, redundat, and flowery fashion in no small part because his patron paid him by the word. This may have been Brust being cheeky, but I think he was seriouus.

I talk about this series up above, and yes, Dumas was paid by the line. (Not unusual for the time, Dickens was similarly paid by the word.)

I think that extreme formality was also used as a way of indicating dislike and displeasure. Patronizing on purpose, with a side order of "I'm getting close to challenging you to a duel."

Stfu....I wasn't disagreeing you, pos.

We're not talking about the same thing.

I never said it did.

> "Pray I entreat you to answer me" does seem unnecessary. Why ask a question otherwise?

It's just an intensifier. "Hey man, what's got you so down? Please, tell me what's going on!" You don't need the second sentence, but it changes the tone, adds urgency or insistence to the initial request, or helps characterize the person you're asking as not being forthcoming.

Yes in high society everyone was polite

I think you responded to the wrong person.

Fair enough, that makes sense.

With these kind of translations there is often a choice whether to keep to the original style, or to improve it for readability. For instance, Dostoevsky's prose was pretty chaotic at times and some translators have chosen to polish it up. Others, notably Pevear & Volokhonsky, try to translate it as faithfully as possible, with the result being rougher. So this may explain it.

Bless your heart....

I know The Inferno and The Tao differ greatly depending on who did the interpretation. Would this be the same with The Count off Monte Cristo and if so which would you suggest

Robin Buss is the gold standard for Monte Cristo translators and is the one everyone will recommend, unless you have your heart set on an abridgement in which case I've heard good things about Lowell Blair. Definitely stay away from nineteenth century translations because they're often bowdlerized.

but germans love unification

Such a great book. The audiobook by Bill Homewood made it extra enjoyable on this account.