Yours, Formally

German, like many other languages around the world but unlike English, has two ways of saying you: "du" (informal) and "Sie" (formal).* In your first-level language class, you complain about having to learn the extra conjugation, but this is only a minor annoyance, you think, in a language with many major ones. Then you start living in the German-speaking world, and you realize that even though you can conjugate both forms, you don't have the foggiest idea of how to use them.



Corporations address you in their billboards as "Sie," but if you are writing political propaganda, you address "the people" informally. People under 30 use "du" with one another, unless one of them happens to have a part-time job at Billa and is working the cash register. Students, regardless of age, address one another with "du," while professors generally get the more respectful "Sie," but when everyone is working together on projects, like at my workplace, it can be difficult to tell who is who.

Contrary to what what I thought for years, the du-Sie distinction is not a matter of social position but one of social closeness. There is, for example, no such thing as a one-sided "du." Either the relationship between two people is close enough to warrant "du," or it isn't, but subordinate-superordinate relationships in which one person uses the more informal term while the other continues to use the more respectful one don't exist.

And that begs the question: When are you close enough to use "du"? After my third meeting with my tutee last semester, his parents began addressing me as "du," meaning that I could do the same. I addressed my emails to Monika, the person to whom I applied for my internship this summer, with "Sie," and she did the same, but upon our first personal meeting we switched over to "do." I've also experienced a failed switchover. The Central College professor last semester sometimes addressed me with "du" and sometimes with "Sie," which just confused me, so I just kept up with "Sie" to be on the safe side.

Ultimately, the du-Sie distinction is cultural, not linguistic, and because I am still an outsider to Austrian culture, I normally just follow the lead of my conversation partner. This, of course, requires that I constantly pay attention to which form is being used, and that I have some dexterity in switching forms during multi-person conversations in which some people are "du" and some are "Sie."

Today, though, I realized that I have gained some sense of the context for "du" and "Sie." I was waiting for the Straßenbahn (streetcar) home after attending a street festival with a friend from last semester when a 40-year-old man came up to me and asked in an Eastern European accent whether this was indeed the Straßenbahn stop. And he used "du." I was a little taken aback, and I realized that I do indeed expect to be addressed as "Sie" if approached by a random stranger on the street. I had internalized the distinction enough to be insulted when the norm was broken.


* Technically, there's also "ihr" (informal plural), but that's just a grammatical quirk and not important to the story.