I can recommend dict.cc‘s vocabulary trainer.  It allows you to create your own list of words you’d like to learn, and to feed that into a virtual flash card system.  Users can make their lists public.  There are quite a few public lists on special topics, like this list of  financial vocabulary in German, including ‘to take out a mortgage’ (eine Hypothek aufnehmen), but also ‘to be wary’ (auf der Hut sein).

There are also lists of vocabulary for beginners.

dict.cc. A dictionary based on a user-built corpus, published by Paul Hemetsberger, with a ‘vocabulary trainer’ (flash-card simulator).

BEOLingus, published by the Technische Universität Chemnitz.

wordreference.com. A dictionary published by Michael Kellog, accompanied by language discussion forums.

Two monolingual dictionaries

Das Digitale Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache des 20. Jahrhunderts, von der Akademie der Wissenschaften

Das Deutsche Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, begun in 1854.  Extensive documentation of changes in the meaning of German words.

Noch was dazu?

A long list of dictionaries and other resources is maintained at wordreference.com.

The poem I chose is a very short and rather famous example of Goethe’s vers libre; one of the two poems to which he gave the title Wandrers Nachtlied, which he’s said to have carved into the wood of a hut somewhere while out walking.  The text of my recording follows. If any German speakers would be kind enough use to comment function to point out any errors the may find, I’d be much obliged.

Heute werde ich dir von dem Gedicht Wandrers Nachtlied von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe sprechen.

Ich werde langsam und deutlich sprechen, und eine alltägliche Sprache benutzen, um das Gedicht zu erklären.

Das Hörprogramm hat drei Teile.

Im ersten Teil des Programms werde ich das Gedicht langsam vorlesen.

Dann, im zweiten Teil des Programms, werde ich die Vokablen des Gedichts erklären.

Am Ende des Programms, im vierten Teil, werde ich das Gedicht im schnelleren Tempo wieder vorlesen.

Wandrers Nachtlied von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

Nun, ich werde jetzt den Text erklären.  Ich werde jedesmal eine Zeile des Gedichts lesen, und dann die Vokabeln jener Zeile erklären.

Ich fange aber bei dem Titel des Gedichts an.  Der Titel ist: Wandrers Nachtlied.  Was heißt das?

Ein Wanderer ist jemand, der zu Fuß auf Reisen geht.  Wenn man zu Fuß geht, aber nicht sehr weit, zum Beispiel nur in die Hauptstraße geht, dann sagen wir, man geht spazieren.  Aber wenn man sehr weit geht, z. B. auf das Land, oder von einer Stadt zur anderen, dann wandert man.

Das Wort ,Nacht’ kennst du schon.  Wenn der Tag vorüber ist, und die Sonne untergeht, dann wird es Nacht.

Das Wort ,Lied’ kennst du vielleicht auch.  Ein Lied ist etwas, was man singt.  Es hat einen Text, und eine Melodie; es kann auch einen oder mehrere Kehrverse oder Refrains haben.

Aus dem Wort ,Nacht’ und dem Wort ,Lied’ macht Goethe das zusammengesetze Wort Nachtlied — also ein Lied über die Nacht, oder ein Lied, das man zur Nacht singt.

Der ganze Titel, ,Wandrers Nachtlied‘ würde dann heißen, ein Lied, das ein Wanderer singt, wenn es Nacht ist.

Ich gehe jetzt zu der ersten Zeile über.  Die erste Zeile lautet so:

»Über allen Gipfeln«

Ich glaube, du verstehst die ersten zwei Worte, »über allen«.  Was sind aber »Gipfeln«?  Nun, der Gipfel ist der höchste Punkt auf einem Berg.  Man spricht auch von der Bergspitze.

Bergsteiger, wie Edmund Hillary, der Mann, der mit Tenzing Norgay Mount Everest zum ersten Mal bestiegen hat, wollen immer den Gipfel eines Berges erreichen.  Das also ist der Gipfel, der höchste Punkt, oder die Spitze, eines Berges.

Goethe verwendet aber den Plural von Gipfel: er spricht in dem Text von »allen Gipfeln«.

Um zu verstehen, was er hier meint, müssen wir zur zweiten Zeile übergehen, denn das erste Satzglied endet erst in der zweiten Zeile.

Die zweite Zeile lautet so:

»Ist Ruh«.

Nehmen wir die zweite Zeile zusammen mit der ersten, so haben wir:

»Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh«.

Das Wort »Ruh« ist eine Abkürzung.  Es ist eine kürzere Form von dem Wort »Ruhe«.  Das machen die Dichter manchmal, sie verwenden kürzere Formen der Wörter, denn manchmal passt ein Wort mit weniger Silben besser ins Gedicht.  »Ruhe« hat zwei Silben: »Ruh-e«; man sagt, das Wort ist zweisilbig.  »Ruh« aber ist nur einsilbig.

Was heißt aber »Ruhe«?  Na, wenn du viel gearbeitet hast, zum Beispiel wenn du lange auf deiner Querflöte geübt hast, dann musst du aufhören zu spielen und dich erholen.  Dein Körper tut weh.  Man sagt, er — dein Körper — braucht Erholung, oder er braucht Ruhe.

Ruhe gibt es also überall, wo es keine Bewegung gibt.

Das ist die eine Bedeutung von »Ruhe«: der Entzug von Bewegung.  Es gibt aber auch eine zweite Bedeutung.

Man sagt auch, es gibt Ruhe, wenn es nichts gibt, was man hören kann, also wenn es still oder ruhig ist.  Ruhe heißt also Stille.

Du siehst wohl, dass die zwei Bedeutungen von Ruhe verwandt sind.  Bewegungen bringen oft Geräusche mit sich.  Also wo es Bewegung gibt, gibt es oft keine Stille.  Und wo es keine Bewegung gibt, gibt es oft sowohl Ruhe, im Sinne von Stille, als auch Ruhe, im Sinne von »keine Bewegung«.

Und in dem Text ,Wanderers Nachtlied‘ spielen beide Bedeutungen eine Rolle.

»Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh« — heißt etwa: es ist ruhig über den Gipfeln der Berge, aber auch: es gibt dort keine Bewegung.

Die dritte Zeile lautet so:

»In allen Wipfeln«.

Der Dichter benutzt das Wort »Wipfeln«.  Wipfeln sind schon wieder eine Art Spitze.  Diesmal aber bedeutet das Wort nicht die Spitzen der Berge, sondern die Spitze der Bäume.  Man spricht auch von Baumspitzen oder Baumkronen.

Die Worte in der dritten Zeile, »in allen Wipfeln,« sind wieder nur ein Teil vom ganzen Satzglied.  Es geht weiter in den vierten und fünften Zeilen.  Ich lese also die dritte, die vierte und die fünfte Zeile zusammen:

»In allen Wipfeln / Spürest du / Kaum einen Hauch.«

Das Verb ist »spüren«.  Spüren heißt etwa »fühlen«.  Fühlen kannst du äußere Dinge, die deine Haut berühren; zum Beispiel, du kannst mit den Fingern fühlen, ob ein Ding warm oder heiß ist.  Aber man benutzt auch das Wort fühlen, wenn man von innere Zustände spricht.  Du kannst Angst, oder  Schmerz, oder Liebe in dir selbst fühlen.

Spüren ist ähnlich wie fühlen.  Du kannst innere Zustände deiner Selbst spüren, zum Beispiel spüren, dass du Angst oder Hunger hast.  Du kannst auch äußere Dinge spüren, zum Beispiel den Wind in deiner Haare.

Es gibt doch einen kleinen, aber wichtigen Unterschied zwischen »spüren« und »fühlen«.  Diesen Unterschied kann man verstehen, wenn man das Phänomen der Jagd betrachtet.

Besonders in früheren Zeiten sind der König und seine Ritter auf Jagd gegangen.  Sie haben ihre Hunde mitgenommen und sind in den Wald gegangen, um Tiere wie Wildschweine zu fangen.  Das tun heute noch reiche Leute in Großbritannien: sie jagen Füchse.

Nun, wenn man auf die Jagd geht, weißt man am Anfang nicht, wo die Wildschweine oder wo die Füchse sind.  Man bringt deshalb seinen Jagdhund mit, der eine sehr feine Nase hat, und sehr gut riechen kann.  Der Hund sucht nach den Spuren vom Wildschwein oder vom Fuchs.  Diese Spuren sind die Zeichen, die bleiben, wo das Tier vorbeigegangen ist.  Diese Zeichen können Fußabdrücke, oder Gerüche sein.  Wenn der Hund diese Spuren, diese Zeichen vom Fuchs sucht, wenn er zum Beispiel mit seiner feinen Nase nach dem Geruch des Fuchses riecht, so sagt man, das er nach dem Fuchs spürt.  Man benutzt also das Wort »spüren«, um dieses suchende Riechen des Hundes zu bedeuten.

Diese Bedeutung schwingt in dem anderen Gebrauch von dem Wort »spüren« mit.  Spüren heißt fühlen, aber das Wort impliziert, dass das Fühlen nicht von selber geht, sondern dass das Fühlen vom Ding etwas Mühe brauchen kann, dass es ein suchendes Fühlen ist.

Erinnern wir uns an den Text.  Er lautet so:

»In allen Wipfeln / Spürest du / Kaum einen Hauch.«

»Kaum einen« bedeutet »fast keinen«.  Du magst ihn suchen, aber du wirst fast keinen Hauch zu fühlen bekommen.  Nun, ein Hauch ist eine leichte Bewegung der Luft.  Diese Luft kann aus deinem Mund oder deiner Nase als ein leichtes Ausatmen kommen.  Der Wind aber ist auch eine Luftbewegung.  Wenn der Wind sehr stark ist, beschreibt man ihn nicht als einen Hauch, doch wenn er ganz, ganz sanft ist, so sanft wie dein Atmen, so kann man ihn dann als einen Hauch beschreiben.

Die sechste Zeile lautet so:

»Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.«

Ein Vogel ist ein Tier, mit zwei Beinen und zwei Flügeln.  Weibliche Vögel legen Eier, und die meisten Vögel können fliegen.  Manche Vogelarten, wie die Hühner, fliegen nicht so gern; andere, wie Schwäne, schwimmen auf das Wasser.  Ein Vöglein ist ein kleiner Vogel.  Beachte aber, dass auch hier Goethe die normale Silbenzahl des Wortes ändert.  Zwischen Vög- und -lein schiebt er ein ‘e’ hinein, damit das Wort dreisilbig wird: Vö-gel-lein.

Goethes Vögelein sind im Walde.  Der Wald ist eine Gegend, wo sehr viele Bäume nebeneinander wachsen.  Ein Wald ist immer Heimat für viele Tiere, wie zum Beispiel Vögel, aber auch Säugetiere und Reptilien.  Manche Leute, wie zum Beispiel Goethe selbst, wandern gern in Wäldern.

»Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde«, lautet das Gedicht.  Schweigen ist ein Verb, und ein interessantes Wort.  Es gibt kein ähnliches Verb im Englischen, denn schweigen hat nur eine negative Bedeutung, und heißt: nichts sagen, stumm bleiben.  Auch die Vögelein in dem Gedicht sind also ganz ruhig.

Die siebte Zeile lautet so:

»Warte nur, balde«

Ich glaube, du kennst schon das Verb »warten«.  Wenn wir uns in einem Restaurant treffen wollen, und ich mich verspäte, dann musst du auf mich warten.  Hier in dem Gedicht  steht das Verb »warten« in der Befehlsform, im Imperativ: »warte«.  Das Gedicht spricht zu dem Leser: der Leser soll warten.  Auf was sollen wir warten?  Die Antwort kommt nicht, bis wir die nächste Zeile lesen.  Auf diese Antwort müssen wir also jetzt warten.

Ich glaube, du kennst schon das Wort »nur«.  Es bedeutet »nicht mehr als«.  Der Leser soll nur warten, er soll nicht mehr tun, als warten.

Das letzte Wort in der Zeile ist »balde«.  Noch einmal wählt Goethe die zweisilbige Form von einem Wort, das normalerweise einsilbig ist.  Das Wort »bald« ist eine Zeitangabe.  Etwas, das »bald« kommen wird, wird in der nahen Zukunft kommen.  Das heißt, man wird nicht lange warten müssen, bevor es kommt. 

Endlich wollen wir doch die Antwort zu der Frage wissen: worauf sollen wir warten?

Ich lese also die siebte und die achte Zeile zusammen.  Sie lauten so:

»Warte nur, balde / Ruhest du auch.«

Das Nomen »Ruh« haben wir schon kennengelernt: es hieß  »Stille«, aber auch »ohne Bewegung«.  Das Wort »ruhen« ist das entsprechende Verb.  Manchmal sagt man, statt das Wort »Verb«, das Wort »Tunwort«.  Ein Verb, sagt man, steht für etwas, was man tut.  Was aber tut man, wenn man ruht?  Die Antwort lautet: nichts!  Ruhen heißt eben nichts tun, ohne Bewegung sein.  Der Leser, sagt das Gedicht, braucht nur zu warten; er wird bald ohne Bewegung sein.

Jetzt möchte ich das Gedicht in etwas schnellerem Tempo lesen.

Wanderers Nachtlied, von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

“Do you have another one for me?”

This formulation would usually sound awkward to native speakers of Australian English; in other contexts, say when used to request a cigarette, it may even be heard as being overly presumptuous and hence rude. In the same context a native speaker would have been more likely to say something like, “Can I borrow another laptop, please?”

The German-speaker’s formulation follows the pattern, however, of a common way of making a request in German. For example:

“Hast du mal eine Zigarette für mich?”

Native speakers don’t hear this as impolite.  The “mal”, in particular, has no other function than to soften the request, but even without it, the phrase is by no means necessarily rude.

Can you think of any other typical examples?

Further discussion of this structure, and here as well (both in German).

– Goethe.

If the poet you’d understand
Go you must in the poet’s land.

I read that these lines are frequently cited by guidebooks and corporations for the promotion of tourism in places where literary tourism is popular.  For myself, I had always read it as in injunction to try one’s hand at artistic production.

Adorno published Der getreue Korrepetitor in 1963. Subtitled Lehrschriften zur musikalischen Praxis it was taken up after his death into volume fifteen of his Gesammelte Schriften or collected writings, which volume also contains Komposition für den Film, a book he co-authored with Hans Eisler in 1944. Parts of The Faithful Répétiteur derived from Adorno’s time in America as well, namely from the studies he made of the NBC Music Appreciation Hour. They provided much material for the book’s first chapter, from which the excerpt presented here is taken. The excerpt begins at the point in the chapter at which “the negation of music appreciation turns into the plan for an idea of structural listening”, as Adorno says in the book’s preface. There he contextualises the book in relation to essays he had already published. “The Faithful Répétiteur takes up the considerations put forward in Dissonances and in the essays ‘The Maestro’s Mastery’ and ‘New Music, Interpretation, Audience’ from Sound Figures and pushes them further, into the area of musical practice. The attempt is made to progress from the insight into a number of failures of contemporary interpretation and reception to an account of how new music could be correctly heard and presented, and how the new technical media could be correctly employed.” Once the idea of structural listening has been announced in the last pages of the chapter on music appreciation, The Faithful Répétiteur goes on to make good on its prefatory promise. There is a chapter providing ‘Directions for Listening to New Music’, a set of ‘Interpretive Analyses of New Music’—which consists in analyses of three works by Anton Webern, and one by each of Arnold Schönberg and Alban Berg—and a chapter on ‘The Musical Employment of Radio’.

The Excerpt

[Adorno has just been criticising the NBC Music Appreciation Hour.]
The answer to that would be education for adequate listening. Instruction would have to lead towards the ability to apprehend compositions structurally, that is, to mediate their moments with each other such that a context of sense is illumined. The present crisis of musical sense can itself only be grasped against the foil of that context. It is, as something negated, preserved precisely in those works that resist merely asserted sensefulness. The resistance to musical sense today is, as it was already during the revolutionary period of the Schönberg school, the resistance to the faking of sense by means of the traditional forms, which are themselves by no means identical with the only thing that counts, the concrete musical figure. It is this, and nothing else, which the listener must be helped to experience. Even in the case of living music of the traditional type, acquaintance with its typical forms is perhaps a necessary but by no means a sufficient condition of adequate listening. Being musical—what gets hypostatized under this name as being is a becoming, something that has to form itself, something that is open in principle—does not mean the subsumption of what is heard under its covering concept; not merely the capacity to say which position the details have within the logically superordinate schema. It means, rather, the ability as sounds unfold to think that unfolding in its necessity with one’s ears. The ideal of structure as of structural listening is the ideal of the necessary unfolding of music from the individual to the whole, without which the individual is indeterminate. Insofar as in traditional music this dynamic was not external to the formal types, but was as much nourished by them as they, in turn, constituted themselves only in their specific unfolding, musical education needs consciousness of the historically established forms; to act as if each work began again from the beginning, without presuppositions, would be just as Bœotic as reducing it to the skeleton that it has in common with countless others of the most various rank. But consciousness of the forms always involves consciousness of the divergences at the same time; the forms live in that wherein they are unidentical with themselves, and their substantiality is in many ways one with their capacity for modification. Little of conservative composition teaching was as fruitful as the demonstration of the difference of Bach’s fugues from the fugue type, which scholastic rules had abstracted from Bach himself; say in the free treatment of the transitional phrases in his fugues, compared with the mechanical recipe for producing sequences with inversions of the sequence members in double counterpoint. The student who learns to write a respectable fugue must feel the drive towards such divergence in the analysis of the Bach models, just as he must be aware of that from which they diverge. Insofar as authentic new music all places the specific structural moments, to the detriment of the typical façade, on the outside, the desideratum of structural listening could also be put this way: that every piece of music since the beginning of the thorough-bass age should be heard as if it were modern. The lay belief that in order to understand music one has to have studied the usual theoretical disciplines, harmony and counterpoint, or even with respect to newer constructions mathematics, is silly. That music appreciation is still stuck below the level of scholastic knowledge is no reason for the restoration of the latter; the scholastic disciplines have themselves been abstracted from musical history and the concrete works, then made didactically independent and with the help of natural-scientific hypotheses wherever possible, hypostasized as absolutely valid. They are already reifications of just that which an adequate apprehension would have to call to life. A person can have in their power all of the rules of pure harmonisation, all of the prescriptions of counterpoint, and nevertheless be incapable of spontaneously following the first movement of the Eroica.
That is the response to the accusation of intellectualism, behind which resistance to the aesthetic obligation to the matter in hand likes to hide. No listener should be burdened with acquaintance with concepts that don’t inhere in what he listens to; concepts that don’t present themselves to him as mediated through the concrete structure. But the anti-intellectualism to which the old aesthetics of pure intuition has been reduced in the intellectual economy of the comfortable consumer won’t let itself be satisfied at that. Such anti-intellectualism gets itself annoyed at even the first sign of the synthesis of what appears sensuously. It is through this synthesis that the latter first becomes art at all; in it reception converges with the law of form. Anti-intellectualism tells itself that such effort would rob it of the enjoyment that it demands of art as something to be occupied with during free time. While, at least in ideology, it won’t do without the cultural concept of art as a spiritual matter—for why else listen to serious music?—it wordlessly defends its supposed naïvety with the idea that the intellectual moment is the expression of a feeling, and is always present in the singular sensual moment in time; it need do nothing more than nothing at all: than surrender to that which pleasantly flows over it. But there it deceives itself. In music, as in every art-form, that which the language of philosophy calls sensual and categorial moments are in each other. If the stubborn naïve listener is right that art tolerates nothing intellectual that does not appear sensually, then contrariwise the sensual itself already has an intellectual destiny. It is an illuminated window, and it has the light to thank even for sensual beauty. The perception of the sensual now and here is a function of structural perception, of the turn to the whole, and this is more than just intuition. In the subjective reception of music the place where the spiritual and the sensual each end, where one becomes the other, is contingent, psychological. For the sake of the structure the neophyte, or the deconcentrated person, has to direct his attention intellectually to parts that have already passed away, parts that are no longer in his ear, so that the balance obtains that is produced when what has passed returns again. The experienced listener carries out such a synthesis not by means of the “recognition in the concept” but through the simultaneously active and involuntary reproduction in imagination. The spiritual moment in the force-field of the artwork just as in the adequate relation to it is subject to no logic external to the sensual; there is nothing one would have to think at that point—a suggestion which Hegel already ridiculed. Rather, the spiritual moment is the self-transcendence of the sensual and its presence at a particular point. The reception of artworks is not attention for the sake of orientation. With the labour of self-oblivious openness it lets itself be driven by such transcendence rather than be blocked up in the mere existence of the moment. It is a kind of thinking, just not a conceptual one; its own strength consumes itself in absorbing that which is locked up in the work, and is virtually extinguished in it. Art’s stringency is sui generis; art comes closer to the image of freedom as that which takes leave from empirical reality the closer, the more purely it structures itself according to the necessity of being just so and not otherwise: this necessity constitutes its objectivity. As a simile art anticipates for humanity how complete domination of the material could introduce a state free of domination, how rationality could restore nature. It takes more than memory and expectation to know that in listening to music. The relationship of these indispensable categories is dynamic, one of tension and release; it decides the question of stringency. For that reason sensuality and thought are related reciprocally in the work: perception, as the tension which draws unto itself, determines the non-present just as much as this latter, as fulfilment, either seals that which was perceived earlier, or subverts it. The whole becomes, the sum of all relations, those of succession and also of simultaneity; because music takes place in time, is not already there at an isolated point in time, the structure is not present for the listener as something primary either. It is only a result, and the sense something mediated. That is why the comportment towards music that hopes to receive everything exclusively from the sensual moment in time is insufficient. And yet the totality of the work’s relations, in which the temporal tensions balance each other out, may lift it up out of time’s stream, and the pure time-art do away with time. If it is the wish of primitive consciousness that music kill the time of boredom, then it is mature consciousness that arrives back home at this goal, after first liberating itself from it and thereby healing music of boredom. For time to halt, as the image of the end of all transience, is the ideal of music, of the experience of it and also of musical instruction. This ideal is an ideal of insights, but not of any insight about art, but rather that insight which art itself is, as the correlate to the scientific: knowledge from within. Artworks are the only things in themselves; they stand proxy for the reconciliation with things, which are lost, with nature. The listener’s co-execution of music is the successful self-externalisation of the subject into something that thereby becomes its own: an anticipation of a condition in which estrangement would be nullified.

Language doesn’t only allow us to exchange information about the world, it also serves to negotiate and signal interpersonal relationships.

This is something we do by means, amongst others, of so-called polite-forms (or honorifics). In the simplest cases, they can involve special forms of address, like sir and ma’am, which are frequently found in American English, or the somewhat superannuated mein Herr or gnädige Frau in German.

But they can also occur as inflectional endings, which constitute a stable component of the grammar of a language, as, for instance, in Korean. If I should like simply to say “I eat lunch” in Korean then the neutral form is as follows:

Na-nun cemsim-ul mek-nun-ta
I-TOP lunch-ACC eat-INDICATIVE-DECLARATIVE

But there are five further levels of politeness:

“deferential”

Na-nun cemsim-ul mek-sup-ni-ta

I-TOP lunch-ACC eat-RESPECT-INDICATIVE-DECLARATIVE

“polite”

Na-nun cemsim-ul mek-e-yo

I-TOP lunch-ACC eat-INTIMACY-POLITENESS

“familiar”

Na-nun cemsim-ul mek-ney

I-TOP lunch-ACC eat-FAMILIARITY

“intimate”

Na-nun cemsim-ul mek-e

I-TOP lunch-ACC eat-INTIMACY

“abrupt/direct”

Na-nun cemsim-ul mek-so/-uo

I-TOP lunch-ACC eat-DIRECT

To explain the intricacies of this very complex system would take us too far. A few years ago I was at a party in Berkeley, which apart from me was attended only by Koreans. We spent a large part of the evening imagining various situations and asking ourselves who would use which level of politeness in those situations. It quickly became clear that there are big individual differences, but also that which form is appropriate when depends on gender, age, profession and many other things. That somewhat crude classification of examples does demonstrate one thing, however. At least two different dimensions play a role here: respect and distance.

In German and in other European languages honorifics in the pronoun-system play a role. There are typically two different forms for the second person, often refered to in linguistics as the T-form and the V-form (named after the French tu and vous):

	T-form	V-form
French	tu	vous
Spanish	tu	usted
Italian	tu	Lei
Russian	ty	vy
Swedish	du	ni
Hungarian	te	maga
German	du	Sie

The frequency of the V-forms varies strongly across the different languages. Whilst they are very frequent in French, that are hardly found any longer in the Scandanavian languages. The particular situations and social relationships that are marked by the use of the V form diverge also (a freely available paper on the topic is Helmbracht 2005). In general, however, it can be established that the same two dimensions that were mentioned above play a role: respect and distance.

The potential for friction, in all of this, lies in the fact that those two dimensions are expressed by means of a single distinction. Each of the two forms therefore has a double function: du can express closeness, but also lack of respect; Sie can express respect, but also distance. In each case, which dimension is intended depends on the situation and the relationship between the speaker and the addressee.

Which brings me to my topic. As a reader of this blog [Bremer Sprachblog], you [Sie] will certainly have noticed that in our posts and also in our responses to your comments we address you as ‘Sie‘. That’s not unheard of in the blogosphere, but it is definitely rare. And a few days ago, it elicited the annoyance of a reader, A.T.: he came to us via a link from Nils Reiters Goetheblog 3 (Nils, many thanks by the way for the link and first and foremost for the flattering comparison with Language Log) and then left the following comment:

Thanks for the link, but is that done in any other country, a blogger addressing his readers with ‘Sie’ in the comments?

I let myself in on the discussion and wrote the following:

Well, when I entered the blogosphere I gave some conscious thought to forms of address. Of course it’s clear to me that communication on the internet usually has a more informal character, especially in forums and blogs. Which would suggest that a general “Du” would certainly not be inappropriate (and I’m never offended when a reader calls me du). But still I thought that it can’t hurt to cultivate a polite tone, seeing as bloggers and readers are, to begin with, strangers.

That was formulated extremely imprecisely, and I can only excuse that by saying that I’ve no qualifications in pragmatics (pragmatics is a sub-discipline of linguistics which investigates T/V-forms, amongst other things). The V-form doesn’t codify politeness per se, but rather respect or distance, according to the situation. A.T. saw through my imprecise formulation immediately, and replied:

So that would make me impolite, because I call my readers du?
By the way, it can cause trouble, because on the internet using Sie is usually much rather considered to be impolite, ultimately it creates a certain distance, which in the blogosphere at least is uncommon. It’s like here in Sweden. If I used Sie I’d get funny looks, so consider yourself the recipient of a funny look

For A.T. the internet itself (or at least the interactive part, so blogs and forums) creates such a great closeness between users that using Sie becomes primarily a signal of distance (an interesting discussion in this direction can also be found here). This distance is then felt to be impolite.

But for me, as I suggested in my response, quoted above, the internet is more a place where users initially encounter one another as strangers, strangers who may have a common interest, but who will not automatically become close friends. Foremost in my mind when I decided on Sie was the cultivatation of a respectful interaction between like-minded people. By no means do I wish to express distance thereby — I feel myself closely bound to the readers of the Bremer Sprachblog, say through a common interest in language and languages, and through the fact that together we constitute a part of the blogging subculture. For those reasons I shall definitely stick with Sie, however I am very interested to learn what your opinion is on the use of du and Sie on the internet.

HELMBRECHT, Johannes (2005). Typologie und Diffusion von Höflichkeitspronomina in Europa. Arbeitspapiere des Seminars für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Erfurt Nr. 18 [PDF].

STRAUSS, Susan & EUN, Jong Oh (2005). Indexicality and honorific speech level choice in Korean. Linguistics 43(3), 611–651.

Translated from the German by Marc Hiatt, 9.04.07. Published under this Creative Commons license.

64. Thus every organic body of a living being is a kind of divine machine, or natural automaton, which infinitely surpasses all artificial automata. Because a machine made by the art of man is not machine in every one of its parts. For example: the tooth of a brass wheel has parts or sections that for us no longer count as something artificial, and no longer have anything which, on account of the use for which the wheel was destined, indicates a machine. But the machines of nature, i.e. the living bodies, are still machines even in their smallest parts, into infinity. That is what distinguishes nature from art, i.e. the divine art from ours.

65. And the author of nature was able to carry out this divine and infinitely marvellous work of art, because not only is every part of matter divisible into infinity, as the ancients recognised, but, moreover, each is actually divided without end into further parts of which every one possesses a movement of its own: for otherwise it would be impossible that each particle of matter should be able to express the entire universe.

66. From which one sees that there is a world of creatures, of living beings, of animals, of entelechies, of souls, in the slightest part of matter.

67. Every part of matter can be conceived of as garden full of plants and a pond full of fish. But again every twig of a plant, every member of an animal, every drop of its humours is such a garden or such a pond.

68. And although the earth and the air between the plants of the garden; or the water between the fish of the pond are neither plant nor fish they always contain these, but in a subtlety that for us is imperceptible.

69. And so there is nothing fallow, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos and no confusion except apparently; much as a pond might seem to one who from a distance perceived a confused movement and a swarming, so to speak, of fish, without discerning the fish themselves.

Translated from the German (c) by Marc Hiatt, with reference to the original French (parallel French and German texts can be found in Hartmut Hecht’s Reclam edition, Stuttgart: 1998).

THE DOGS’ DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

When in the course of the history of living beings, it becomes necessary for one species to dissolve the bands that have bound it to another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the independent and equal station to which the laws of nature and its divinity entitle it, a decent respect for the opinions of all creatures requires that it should declare the grounds on which it acts.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

that all creatures are created equal,

that they are endowed by the creator with inalienable rights, that among these
are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,

that in this respect no difference between human beings and animals obtains,

that therefore, according to the measure of the highest ideals, the proposition holds, all animals are human beings,

that accordingly dogs too may properly claim human rights,

that among the human rights of dogs there are included, aside from eating, drinking and sleeping: sniffing, straying from the path, barking, biting, cocking legs, playing at nonsense and a reasonable measure of general destruction,

that dogs have the divine right and the moral duty to bring about for themselves, among themselves as in their relations to all species, a state in which all those activities and possibilities of happiness are guaranteed, without renunciation, without collar, lead or punishment.

The present state of dogs which on historical, not rational grounds, subjects them to the power of human beings has not guaranteed the human rights of dogs.  Those rights in particular are denied us which derive from human nature as it is concretized in dogs.  Sniffing, one of the dogliest and as such humanest activities, is denounced as beastly.  We are forced to walk straight paths, whereas according to our nature the path is more important than the goal, and hence a wandering path always better than a straight one.  Barking activities, the purest expression of which we are capable, are deformed to human purposes and restricted to the arbitrary occasions that suit our masters.  We are forbidden to bite human beings, even though they themselves yearn for it, and are secretly pleased when one of us succeeds, like my fellow dog Prince did with Miss Garbo. Leg-cocking activity is reduced from our most intimate olfactory language to a lowly matter of regulated health-care.  Human beings make playing at nonsense a privilege of their own, and won’t allow it us since they are too ashamed by the thought that we are as good at it as they are at their bridge.  They don’t even allow us to satisfy our appetite for destruction with polished brown boots and saucily curved chair legs, whilst they themselves with their machines, so hostile to dogs, give free rein to their own appetite for destruction.

In just consideration of all these circumstances and assured of the good nature of our cause, appealing to the public conscience of all creatures, from superhumans to bacteria, we have come to the recognition that it can no longer go on in this way, and so we declare, as a species equal to the human, our independence from degenerate humanity.  But in order to preserve our well considered resolution, founded not upon blind inclination but upon inborn truth, from any semblance of impassioned irritation, ingratitude or enmity, in order that it be recognized as arising out of the matter itself, and not out of self-interested partiality, we deliver this declaration to one whose understanding for all suffering creatures is as certain as his deep and sensitive knowledge of the human nature of Dogs:

FRITZ LANG

whom I have to thank for the possibility of living, for the preservation of freedom beyond the measure otherwise so restricted by human beings, and for happiness achieved.  May he make himself the advocate of our great cause to a less panhumanistically oriented humanity.  The gratitude of all dogdom will be his until the colonization of the moon.

This declaration has been formulated in consultation with the creator of panhumanism, Archibald the Hippopotamus-King.  However, I alone take responsibility for it, in the name of all dogdom, and by the power of my own historically attested name.

Given at

Los Angeles, California, on the fifth day of the month of December in the year one thousand nine hindred and forty-six.

Translated from the German (c) by Marc Hiatt. (11.06-04.07)