With our daughter starting school a few weeks ago, I have had an interesting thought: how do children address a teacher in Germany?

I don’t necessarily mean whether the children are on first-name terms with their teachers, because as far as I am aware they are not.  They are referred to as “Herr” or “Frau” with their surnames.

But, do they use the informal Du or the formal Sie form to talk to them?

Normal German protocol would require them to use Sie when talking to someone that they are not on first-name times with, and especially someone who is considerably older then they are.

I’m just not sure how many 6-year-olds have mastered the formal verb conjunctions.  Perhaps it just comes naturally to them?

Tags: School, teacher

Some other posts on this topic that you might like to read:

• A sponsored walk to Oberstedten and back
• Oberursel’s “Day of the Bicycle”
• First impressions of a Waldorf School

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 1:06 pm and is filed under School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.