Comment by k07b470n
5 days ago
Interesting how you write "Du" and not "du". I'm French and I've been living in Germany for 20 years. I understand and use "du/Sie" more or less appropriately (we have the same dichotomy in French). What I still cannot wrap my head around after all this time is why/when some people use "du/Du", "dein/Dein", "dich/Dich" in writing (to be clear: not at the beginning of a sentence). I guess "Du" is somewhere inbetween "du" und "Sie" on the politeness scala but I never dared to ask. I'm only using lowercase "du". What would be a rule of thumb on how/when to use the uppercase "Du"?
"Du" and "du" are generally 100% equivalent. Regular casing-rules apply, e.g. in the beginning of a sentence it's "Du" but inside it's "du". "Kannst du mir helfen?". "Du kannst dir doch selbst helfen!"
Sometimes it's written "Du" even if in the middle of the sentence when addressing someone directly. It's technically incorrect, but it's used for emphasis and hence politeness, and that's probably where your feeling comes from.
The same can happen with other words that are getting capitalized for similar reasons, but when going strictly by the book it's grammatically incorrect. An example would be "das Große Ganze" where it should be "große" but it is capitalized to emphasize the connection/phrase.
>It's technically incorrect, but it's used for emphasis and hence politeness, and that's probably where your feeling comes from.
That's wrong, it's not technically incorrect. In fact before 2006 the only correct way to address someone personally in written form was to capitalize the Du / Sie / Ihr. Since then you are allowed to write it either way. I still use the capitalized form because I'm old and that's what I learned back in school.
Fair enough.
> Since then you are allowed to write it either way
Okay, my interpretation is that it doesn't really make sense within the language rules, so they changed it but allowed to use the old style to make the transition easier. ;-)
> I still use the capitalized form because I'm old and that's what I learned back in school.
Impossible to keep up with all the Rechtschreibreformen anyways.
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