Awkward situations: Let's 'du' it.

Like many languages other than English, German makes a distinction between a formal 'you', or Sie relationship with someone and an informal 'you', or du relationship, depending on who you're talking to, how long you've know them, their age, position, etc.

One of the jokes students know and love about how English doesn't distinguish this is the phrase, "you can say you to me." I believe it was one of the German foreign ministers who said that to Margaret Thatcher, which, obviously, is ridiculous. Even more so than JFK's famous, "I am a jelly donut".

"You can say you to me." Um, ok...

Now, in German, where there is this du and Sie relationship, you can always offer the du or the Sie, as you wish,  and as long as it's appropriate. They call it to 'duzen' and 'siezen' one another.

If you translate it to English and you want to be friendly, aka du, you end up saying, "you can do me. Please, I insist. Do me." Or, "Should we do each other?", which in English might be misunderstood as a different friendly offer, which may have happened to some of us...accidentally...before we realized the mistake.

"Should we do each other?"
"Excuse me?"

I mean when I first meet people I'm friendly, but not that friendly...unless it's Henry Cavill. Then I might make an exception.

Awkward Situations: Because sometimes...you just have to.

I was riding the bus home from work the other day and was sitting in a four seat area. The man across from me was on the phone and for about five minutes he was talking very excitedly about something. He kept saying, perfect, awesome, thanks, wonderful, great, great, great, thank you. Though, it was in German, so it was more like, perfekt, super, danke, wunderbar, super, toll, toll, toll, super, danke, danke, danke.

Obviously, it was something good. On his last "Danke", he hung up the phone. He snorts loudly like a pig, whinnies like a horse, then fist pumps...twice, "Ja! Ja!"

What my face probably looked like.

I...for a second I thought, did he just snort like a pig and whinny like a horse? I almost lost it. I looked at the girl sitting next to him who was looking away and smiling. She'd heard it too. For the rest of the trip I had to bury my face in my scarf not to laugh out loud, and I don't mean the internet, lol, I mean, literally, laugh out loud.





I hope there comes a day when we're all so excited we snort and whinny and fist pump at the same time.