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Ignoring du/ihr forms in German learning? | ||
Tags: Polite/Informal Forms | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4027 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes  Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 17 of 31 23 December 2013 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I missed that connection. That simplifies things. So, for verb endings, I can leave out memorizing the du/ihr forms, and instead just apply the st/t rule? Always? Du/ihr also have these other things which cannot be inferred from other cases: euer, eure, euch, seid - are these the only outliers? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4027 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 18 of 31 23 December 2013 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Does using Sie have some negative connotation? Why would a person ask du to be used at him/her? In a conversation: if one person uses Sie, and the other du, does it make it unnatural? Is there some convention that either both use Sie or both use du? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4478 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 19 of 31 23 December 2013 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No. It's just more formal/distant. So you shouldn't call your boss by the Du form unless s/he invites you first. But you would also use Sie, say, when the plumber comes around to fix the sink, as it would sound way too familiar to use Du. Du implies a less formal more equal relationship.
Yes. You are either one or the other. The more "senior" person has to invite the other person to use the Du. My wife's supervisor spoke German and English to her, and it drove her mad that while they were on first name terms in English, he took years to invite to use the Du form. Once you go to Du it's very hard to go back to Sie.
More formal situations use Sie, but students for instance always use Du. Edited by patrickwilken on 23 December 2013 at 8:28pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4954 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 20 of 31 24 December 2013 at 2:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I wouldn't recommend ignoring or postponing it. Most reasons have been mentioned already, some weren't:
-I don't think it is a good idea to learn to partially conjugate verbs and hope you can just add the rest of the forms later. Especially if the "later" becomes "much later". Shape your memory while the whole conjugation learning is still fresh, don't try to move already built and solid structures a year later. -Being able to properly differenciate between the formal and familiar form is a needed and basic skill. And it is not that hard, at least in the rough forms without fine details. And a nice bonus: Should you ever desire to learn French, Czech, Slovak or others, the distinction is very similar. -If you are under 30, you will look ridiculous in a lot of situations with people of your age or younger if you can't get out of "Sie". -While some languages are slowly shifting to either the more or the less formal variant over time (for example Spanish is now obviously far in the transition to the less formal variant), German seems to be quite content with having both. It is very unlikely, in my opinion, that either Sie or du would be pushed to the margins of usage during our lifetimes. -If you use native input in your learning, you are more than sure to enocounter both all the time. Do you really want to pass on the opportunity to naturally learn to use them correctly in hopes of adding one form later? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5486 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 21 of 31 24 December 2013 at 5:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As a non-native speaker of German who spent 9 months living in Vienna (I studied abroad
when I was 20) I agree with everyone who has said that ignoring/postponing du/ihr is a poor choice. If you never plan on sitting Goethe Institute exams and also never plan on visiting a German speaking country then I suppose it would be ok. But again, if you intend on talking to anyone your age or younger you're going to sound absolutely ridiculous. Yes I understand that if people that you're speaking on, say Skype, to make a fuss about it then feel free to stop conversing with them. That said du is exceedingly easy and also just useful. I also think that learning the du/ihr forms after the fact (if you postponed learning it) would end up being a lot harder than if you learned them from the beginning. You also run the risk of not being polite (aka being too formal) which is a bigger issue if you're interacting with people in a German speaking country than if you're talking to someone online. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4478 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 22 of 31 24 December 2013 at 9:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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One thing I didn't mention is that people are in my experience very forgiving to people learning the language who mix-up Sie/Du. So it's nothing to stress about making a mistake.
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| Tollpatchig Senior Member United States Joined 3952 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Maltese | Message 23 of 31 24 December 2013 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Like Patrick said, its just waaayy too formal in most situations. The reason a person would ask you to use du would be because he or she wants to be adresaed in a more friendly manner. The older or more senior person will always use du with a younger or junior person. Also if you learn any slang or colloquial speech it would conflict with your constant use of Sie and then you would really sound like a weirdo. Edited by Tollpatchig on 24 December 2013 at 2:39pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4027 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 24 of 31 24 December 2013 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Bit of a rant: so the Possesive artikel of the Sie form is Ihr (Ihr Tish); for the ihr
form its euer/eure. And the Pronoun of third person feminine dative is ihr. Why could not they have picked something different? And the adjective and ein ending for dative feminine is "er" making it sound masculine. All this mixing is making my head hurt. Urk. Edited by Gemuse on 26 December 2013 at 9:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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