After last week’s excursion into the pitfalls of using du and Sie, it quickly became clear from the number of comments that this is a topic of no small interest both to Germans and learners of the language alike. So I thought I’d give you a bit more on the same theme this week. Don’t say, oh dearest Young Germany readers, that I never do anything for you.

Now, last week I wrote that there is considerable comedic promise in the fact that German has two forms of second-person address: so let’s look at precisely what is so funny about Siezen and Duzen.

Thanks to – unbelievably – Barack Obama on Flickr