If there is any one thing I hate, and I mean REALLY hate, it is the formal address in German, otherwise known as Höflichkeitsform.

"per Sie" is a dinosaur, a relic of a time where the social pecking order of more feudal times was incorporated into the language, to constantly remind one if they were Herrenmensch or Untermensch, so to speak. It used to exist in English, but was discarded hundreds of years ago.

The transition from Sie to Du can be akward, and it also conflicts with my desire to deal with people on a more informal basis from an early stage.

Many people say it will never disappear, but I think it will. The german language is evolving, and I recently read some big companies have a "per du" policy from the first moment, as a way of making employee interaction more personal.

A

Mmmmmmm. I'd give it another 150 years, or so. Everytime the 'du' generation reaches 30, they revert to 'Sie'...

Swedish also has a formal and informal version, but they now only use the informal.

I truly wish German would go that way - I am forever mis-addressing our elderly neighbors with "du" forms , since in German classes they always revert immediately to "du" and never stick with Sie.

I find it so surprising to hear work colleagues from Germany addressing eachother with Herr and Frau and Sie, despite working together for years.

Whatever you do dont move to Austria then, you have to remember to use all the titles too!

Seriously, no, it wont die out. Plus, just calling everyone Du or by their first name doesnt really make the world less hierarchical or friendly, the distinctions are just a bit more subtle.

But the nice thing about being a foreigner is you can pretend to be not too good at these conventions and break the ice prematurely.

What I find a real killer is having to remember everyones name and keep using it... that's really something Brits never learn to do.

Daniel

In English of course we use only the 'Sie' form: 'you'. Thou, thee, thine having gone out of common usage soon after Elizabethan times...

Really then you obviously have never been up north and actually they more or less died out in Elizabethan times EII that is when the church (of England) updated its Bible to simple English...

That sentence doesn't make sense. Is it Elizabethan English?

Sorry Adfab. You know there is alos a big campaign to remove punctuation from the English language as it apparently only confuses and I thought that I would see. So is this better:
Really? Then you obviously have never been up north, and actually, they more or less died out in Elizabethan times, EII that is, when the church (of England) updated its Bible to simple English...

Alles Klar.

Like in: "Tha's nought wasted where thou keeps a pig" and "Thou shalt dispense with all punctuation"...

Isn't it the other way around, being that we only use the "du" form in English for 'you'? I would have thought if we used "Sie", we would all be constantly addressing people with 3rd person plural. Boy, wouldn't that cause confusion.

But I give it less than 150 years, I say no more than 20 or 30 and its gone. Don't forget, before WWII the Germans hadn't adapted many foreign words at all. For example, ask Germans now what they call an Banana, and nearly everyone will say its a Banana. Before WWII it was proudly referred to as a "Schlauchapfel" (hose-apple). You have to adore the literal (and hence non-imaginative) aspects of many German nouns!

The third person plural is 'they'.

'Thou' is/was the second person singular - the familiar form. The German speaker calls God 'Du', the English speaker used to call God 'Thou', now they rarely speak to him...

Exactly. So when one addresses someone "per Sie", you are literally addressing them in 3rd person plural eg. " Would they like a cup of coffee?" or "Thank you for their help".

Do you mean sie (they), not to be confused with sie (she) or Sie with capital (you formal and formal plural). I think it's not possible in German to make a heard disctinction between 'would they or would you formal like a cup of coffee?'

But what do I know....

I am not aware of any either, and I believe this was the intention. By addressing someone in 3rd person you are in effect not addressing them directly, hence the referred politeness....at least that is the only logic I can see in it.

I think in the old days there was the "Ihr" form of address, used when speaking to royalty.

I like it Herr Litespeed. Its like wearing a suit to work. You can make the demarcation easily between your professional relationships and your personal ones. You can then make the transition to a more personal basis when you are ready rather than some smarmy cold-calling estate-agent thinking he can do it for you : being immediately on first-name terms.

Its interesting to note that although initially informal, English gentlemen traditionally revert to more formal address in order to be insulting.
Damn your hide Sir !
dave

Not really getting what this thread is driving at

Germany: per Sie for decades

Switzerland: per Sie until the first apéro, then the Duzis (Sagen Sie Du zu mir) is offered.

Unless you get sloshed at said apéro and do something unspeakable, then it's per Sie until Kingdom Come

I think the point is will German drop the Sie (formal form) for du (informal form)? I pointed out that in English we actually dropped the informal form 'thou' for the formal form 'you'. However, many English native-speakers are surprised the 'thou' is not the formal form because of the 'King James' version' or 'Authorised version' of the Bible where God is address as Thou.

It is as difficult for English-speakers to imagine that there can be two versions of 'you', as it is for German-speakers to imagine there can be only one...