Re: THEORY: The fourth person

Quoting Carsten Becker <post@...>:

> While reading the mails that I wanted to read but couldn't manage to
> read up to now ...
>
> From: "Henrik Theiling" <theiling@ABSINT.COM <mailto:theiling@...>>
> Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 2:52 AM
> Subject: Re: THEORY: The fourth person
>
> [snip]
>
>  > Dutch 'men' is also replaced by 'jou'/'je' in most circumstances (like
>  > English) and German 'man' is only a bit behind im time: I'm probably
>  > part of the last generation to use 'man' -- modern usage is 'Du' as
>  > well.  I hate it, but I probably can't stop 'Du' from being misused in
>  > such a way.
>  >
>  > **Henrik
>
> Well, everyone around me also uses "man", and I'm about 15 years younger
> than you (I guess). I could almost hate people for saying "du" instead
> of "man". It hurts my grammatical sense and my ears as well. I also find
> this use of "du" kind of unfriendly towards adults you're not familar
> with or people you've respect of (like teachers e.g.), who should be
> definitely referred to as "Sie".
Among the German students I meet - twenty-somethings, pretty much all of them -
both _du_ and _man_ are used, but _man_ appears to be the commoner one.

Personally I use them interchangeably in speech, but stick to _man_ in writing.

                                                      Andreas

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