ALT TEXT:
- Panel 1: A person with the text “Singular ‘they’” written on them smiling with open arms.
- Panel 2: “Singular ‘They’” beaten up by others who said, “Singular they is ungrammatical. It’s too confusing,” “How can anyone use plural pronouns for singular,” and “Every pronoun should only have one purpose.”
- Panel 3: “You” hiding from the mob who was beating “Singular ‘They’”
- Panel 4: “German ‘Sie’” hiding with even more fear next to “You”
In a nutshell, it’s like English’s they (plural animate or inanimate), it (for feminine objects, remember that german is a gendered language like french) she, and you (both singular and plural) combined.
Though, Sie meaning “you” is the polite version, used to address someone politely. For informal situations, there’s the impolite and always-singular “Du”
While there are different conjugations and capitalization between the different uses of Sie, in the end they all use the same word.
It’s not about politeness.
If you’re on first name terms, it’s extremely rude to switch back to the formal address. Like, „FYI whatever our relationship was, I just burned that“ rude.
And more and more, people who don’t know each other immediately skip the formal part. I personally find „Sie“ rude, and I’m using it only for people I don’t like.
So it’s not about politeness, it’s about not being rude?
Well… I mean being rude and impolite are kind of the same thing, aren’t they.
It’s just that you can’t just switch back and forth how much you like to indicate a certain tone.
It’s not like there’s a real guidebook, it heavily depends on context, and also things like class, status, age brackets, etc.
I think the best equivalent really is the title Mr/Mrs/Ms, or rather if you would call them with their first name:
E.g. you would address an old person on the street you do not know formally. You might or might not choose to adress someone you’re own age on the street either way, though formal is playing it safe.
30y ago, it was pretty much the norm to address your friends‘ parents formally, and at some point they might’ve offered you the informal you. Nowadays it’s absolutely common to go informal from the very start.
At a fancy restaurant, formal is the norm and expected. At a dive bar, it depends. If you’d address the drug dealer at a club in Berlin with „Excuse me, Sir, …“ you’d only show you just arrived from Bumfucknowhere, population 80.
But if you suddenly started calling your father in law for 20y „Mr Robinson“ instead of „Bob“, that certainly would cause some major confusion.
Like that.