A little friendly distance

Stefan's brother and sister-in-law returned this evening from their bicycle tour of the Black Forest. Thus I was fresh off a leisurely two-hour dinner conversation with Bavarians when I arrived at the Lutheran Church's choir practice and said "Gruessdi!" to my fellow Tenoress. "Gruessdi" is Bavarian for "Greetings to informal-you-singular!"

A shocked expression crossed her face and she replied, "Wir siezen, bitte" ("we shall call one another formal-you, please"). Thereupon followed a quite educational conversation during which I tried to say, "I'm so sorry, I always get that mixed up in German, plus I was recently speaking with Bavarians. In English we have only one word for informal-you-singular, informal-you-plural, and formal-you-singular-or-plural, and that word is 'you,' unless one lives in the south, where one may also say 'y'all.'"

"No," Frau T. replied, "it is not at all complicated in German. You-formal and I are not intimate acquaintances. It is important to maintain a little friendly distance. Young people these days, they duzen [call one another informal-you] all the time. They don't understand that a little friendly distance is important. You can be friends with someone for thirty years without ever duzening. Yes, it is useful to keep a little friendly distance."

Meanwhile, one of the sopranos I met last week sailed past us and, seeing me, said, "oh yes, informal-you're Regina, right?" "No, I'm Liz," I corrected her; "and informal-you are...?" "Alex!" she said cheerfully, continuing on her way.

Introductions are important. It's generally OK to duzen with people who offer you their first names, but certainly you should siezen with people who tell you only their last names. Had I actually understood my fellow Tenoress when she introduced herself last week ("Ich bin frauzeh," she said, and I thought "well, I'll have to look up that adjective when I get home"), I would probably have been able to figure out that Zeh ("toe") was an unlikely first name--although, looking back on it, I'm sure I was siezening with her last week, because she's significantly older than I am, and courtesy dictates that you always siezen with your elders. So tonight I just messed up.

Complicating matters is that in Bavaria, when you meet strangers on a path, you are allowed to say "Gruessdi" (or "Gruess euch" if you encounter a group). Because you and your fellow wanderer both like to take walks, you have a special bond that permits such ebullient informality. If you are afraid someone will take you to task for duzening on the trail, you can play it safe and say "Gruess Gott" ("Grettings to God"), which in Southern Germany allows you to sound less like a foreigner than "Guten Morgen," "Guten Tag," or "Guten Abend." (Perish the thought that you would ever say "Gute Nacht" as a greeting--that's for late-night farewells only.)

One way to figure out whether you are supposed to siezen or duzen is to wait for the person with whom you are speaking to use a pronoun first. Until then, construct sentences that avoid pronouns altogether.

Perhaps the challenge young people these days have with keeping all these informal and formal yous straight is the reason that greetings have degenerated over the past twenty years from "Guten Tag" and "Gruess Gott" to the far cruder "Hallo." My fellow Tenoress agrees that "Hallo" is too informal and wonders what this world is coming to.