Talk:Recollections/Part 31 - Part 40/@comment-29688906-20160913160345/@comment-130.180.251.87-20160913181930

Based on my limited knowledge of Japanese, -kou is supposed to be used strictly for people with an actual title like Lord or Duke, -sama just shows greater respect and it can potentially be applied to anyone. I believe that you cannot use both at the same time because grammatically they are both supposed to be honorifics, unlike something like hakushaku-sama for example where the word hakushaku is not a honorific but literally means Count. Also, it would probably be more acceptable for these particular characters to call someone with a title with a honorific like -kou rather than -sama, though I'm under the impression that the honorific has fallen out of use in real life completely. I'm fairly iffy on all this though, since I'm pretty sure that on the other hand you cannot say something like hakushaku-kou because I guess it indicates someone's title twice? So don't take any of this as gospel but I hope it's helpful to you anyway!