macondo ha scritto:The nearest thing I can think of darsi del tu is to be on first name terms.....
Macondo, that isn't quite the same thing. An employee can be on first name terms with his/her boss but that wouldn't necessarily permit familiarity. Aeons ago my wife was in the Foreign Office, and I used to regularly visit her in Paris when she worked at the British Embassy. The British Ambassador then was Soames and he used to insist that everyone use first names, but that in no way placed a lowly typist at his lofty height nor of that of the First Secs.
I think you, collectively, are looking at this from the wrong angle. It isn't that English does not have a
tu, rather it's that there is no equivalent of
Lei, not to mention the now almost totally defunct
Ella.
Darsi del tu really means
Let's stop using Lei.
Every language has its strengths, but it is the use of Lei which makes Italian so rich and subtle. Consider these two phrases, which would be lost on a foreigner:
Benissimo avvocato; sarò ad attenderla domani alle nove nel suo studio and
Signor Vincenzo, che piacere vederlo! and even for a man, out of courtesy, we say
arrivederla in both cases, and not
arrivederlo, in contrast to the more intimate
arrivederci. These subtle gradations are quite impossible in English, but then it is another language.
Peter
La posibilità sempre ghe xe.