First, note my correction to the mistake in the above 'Afterthought'. Brain wasn't in gear.
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Thanks for the info. My German is far from perfect so I don't claim any authority on the matter.
Most of my time in a German-speaking environment was in Austria (Wien) and that was now some years ago. Back when I was learning the language it was always stressed to me not to use du even with friends as it would be deemed as unwanted or excessive familiarity and could be taken as an offense.
That said, from my limited experience there's are significant cultural differences between, say, Berlin and Wien with the latter being more formal and reserved (or it was so when I was living there two decades ago). Thus I find your observation interesting, so I'm now quite curious to see what cultural shifts if any have taken place in Wien since then.
My first time there was in the early 1980s whilst Communism was still in place, so back then there was essentially no movement of people between Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc. and Austria. When I went back in the early 1990 and lived there at various times for about a decade I noticed a definite cultural shift which the locals put down to the movement of people from ex-communist counties such as Slovenia. However I can't say I noticed any shift in the language, but then that's not surprising as most people I worked or dealt with were better at English than I was in German.
No doubt things have become more informal almost everywhere these days so I'm not surprised that there has been a shift in German usage just as there has been in English—even in my lifetime it's been very noticeable.
English is a dog of language, it's slipshod, inconsistent and all over the place (it beats me how anyone who is not a native speaker ever learns it). The point I was making about thou/du illustrates the problem with English quite well, English-speakers are notoriously bad at learning second languages so why make, say, learning German even more complex by not explaining actual parallels between the two languages? It seems no one cares much about the details these days.
As an aside, in English you goes for everything—friends, relatives, one's dog, even inanimate objects. Thus it's interesting to note slang has picked up the cudgels and fought back with a colloquial use of the second person with youse. Many wince at this word and consider it uncouth and uneducated, but when one thinks about it, it makes sense when talking to a small group of friends. Seems funny really, we English speakers chucked out the perfectly good second-person (and respectable) word thou and at least in some circles have replaced it with the uncouth youse. Clearly, modern English is missing something important by using you for the singular and plural forms of the second person.
> English-speakers are notoriously bad at learning second languages
My experience of learning German is that Germans would prefer to speak with you in English, as they want to practise their language skills with a native speaker.
English speakers aren't bad at learning new languages, rather there is little incentive to do so, given everyone speaks or wants to speak English.
Trying to speak a foreign language is sometimes met with confusion "why are you bothering to learn another language? Everyone speaks English" or downright hostility "if you're English just speak English".
"My experience of learning German is that Germans would prefer to speak with you in English,..."
That's often true, and usually they're much more competent in English than the English-speaker is in the foreign language.
From my observations many European countries pay much more attention to teaching foreign languages at a young age when it's easier to learn them than does the anglophone world. Seems to me if one speaks English then there's much less imperative to do so.
I know I'm the 'victim' of this attitude, I should have been trained in at least one foreign language from kindergarten onwards but wasn't. Back then I'd have likely whinged about it but I'd have been damn grateful decades later.
I think there's a certain level of cultural arrogance amongst English-speakers in that they don't have to put in the effort of learning a language when English is essentially a lingua franca. Reverse the situation you posed above about Germans preferring to speak in English. How many people in anglophone countries would prefer to speak to a visitor in say German? I think the answer proves my point.
For the second person plural, variations like "youns", "yous" and "yis" are used frequently in the informal speech of rural Northern Ireland. Though you risk being jeered and taken less seriously if these were spoken in a formal or business setting - it would give you a distinct rural twang.
You may or may not consider these better than "youse", though I will say "yous" before "y'all" (quaint American import) regardless of context to the day I die.
Youse or whatever, the word doesn't matter in the broader context (and youse is regional anyway). Your comment just illustrates my point that people often want to make a distinction when using the second person you.
_
Thanks for the info. My German is far from perfect so I don't claim any authority on the matter.
Most of my time in a German-speaking environment was in Austria (Wien) and that was now some years ago. Back when I was learning the language it was always stressed to me not to use du even with friends as it would be deemed as unwanted or excessive familiarity and could be taken as an offense.
That said, from my limited experience there's are significant cultural differences between, say, Berlin and Wien with the latter being more formal and reserved (or it was so when I was living there two decades ago). Thus I find your observation interesting, so I'm now quite curious to see what cultural shifts if any have taken place in Wien since then.
My first time there was in the early 1980s whilst Communism was still in place, so back then there was essentially no movement of people between Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc. and Austria. When I went back in the early 1990 and lived there at various times for about a decade I noticed a definite cultural shift which the locals put down to the movement of people from ex-communist counties such as Slovenia. However I can't say I noticed any shift in the language, but then that's not surprising as most people I worked or dealt with were better at English than I was in German.
No doubt things have become more informal almost everywhere these days so I'm not surprised that there has been a shift in German usage just as there has been in English—even in my lifetime it's been very noticeable.
English is a dog of language, it's slipshod, inconsistent and all over the place (it beats me how anyone who is not a native speaker ever learns it). The point I was making about thou/du illustrates the problem with English quite well, English-speakers are notoriously bad at learning second languages so why make, say, learning German even more complex by not explaining actual parallels between the two languages? It seems no one cares much about the details these days.
As an aside, in English you goes for everything—friends, relatives, one's dog, even inanimate objects. Thus it's interesting to note slang has picked up the cudgels and fought back with a colloquial use of the second person with youse. Many wince at this word and consider it uncouth and uneducated, but when one thinks about it, it makes sense when talking to a small group of friends. Seems funny really, we English speakers chucked out the perfectly good second-person (and respectable) word thou and at least in some circles have replaced it with the uncouth youse. Clearly, modern English is missing something important by using you for the singular and plural forms of the second person.