The "Working You"

I have joined a creative writing class.

Yes, me! As if it is not enough for me to be writing all day in my work, and then on top of that writing in this blog (which, admittedly, I haven't done for several weeks), I now have additional assignments from my writing class.

There are seven of us in the class - six women and one man. Most of us are around the same age, except for two of the women who are clearly pensioners.

The lady who teaches the class is also a woman. In the first class, indeed in the first few minutes, she established the ground rules of the class. One of these was the way in which we should address each other.

In German, there are two forms of addressing another person - the formal "you" ("Sie" in German, like "vous" in French) and the informal "you" ("Du" in German, like "tu" in French). Normally, we would all be addressing each other in the "Sie" (formal) form, as we don't know each other. Especially, we would be addressing the older ladies in the "Sie" form, as German etiquette dictates that it is the older person who "offers" the younger person to use the "Du" form.

However, our teacher proposed that we all address each other as "Du" (informal) straight off. This is actually normal when you take a class. But it might have been a little bit of a problem here because of the two older ladies.

Both the two older ladies accepted it, although one of them did mention that she found it a little unusual because she came from an older generation, and even in her student days she had been addressed as "Sie". (Seriously she doesn't look that old, but who knows).

Our teacher justified the informal "Du" by calling it the "ArbeitsDu" (the "working you"). She suggested that we all address each other using the "working you" while we're in the class, but if we see each other outside the class we can revert to the formal "Sie".

I think this is so complicated that in the meantime we have all forgotten about it. Anyway, it has all worked so far.