After writing my last post, I started thinking about Du and Sie again, and realised that there has been a big change in Germany in the last few years when it comes to the usage of Du or Sie. It is now much more common to say Du to someone on the first meeting or pretty soon afterwards. All it takes is for the two people to be of roughly the same age (and probably under 40), work in more informal branches of industry like the media or consulting, or for everyone around you to be saying "du" to each other, because they all work together. And bob's your uncle. Or bob is your neighbour at the meeting and not Herr Kaiser anymore.
I am not quite sure what I think about this. I actually quite like Sie and its ability to signal distance between you and someone. It is like saying 'yes, we might be sitting here joking together but I am still going to get a bill from you tomorrow and I want to be able to question it'.
However on the other hand, we get on quite fine without it in English (see my last post) and even countries which used to have two forms like Sweden are all happy with just using 'du'.
The difficulty comes (as is often the case when language is in flux) when there are both usages around. Du as the default 2nd person pronoun and the choice between Sie and Du.
I am convinced however that in 50 years there will be no Sie form, or only for the Queen (who as we all know is quite German).
