Pegontheroad

I have been of the opinion that the term "Fraulein" is used only for women/girls under the age of 18, and that "Frau" is generally used for a woman older than 18, even when she is not married. Is this correct?

Is this correct?

annhig

I'll be interested in the answer to this too.

bvlenci

I thought that Fräulein was pretty much extinct as a term of address.

annhig

bvlenci - I'd be happy to be called Fräulein any time.

Dukey1

Here's just one of many explanations:

http://www.languageexcellence.net/wo...u-or-fraulein/

Cowboy1968

It is extinct.
Only 90+ year old unmarried spinsters expect to be addressed as "Fräulein".
The distinction between Frau and Fräulein was the marriage status, not the age.

If you need to be formal, you address any woman as "Frau".
You also do not address female waitstaff as "Fräulein" any more. if you need the waitress' attention, just say Excuse me. Or the German equivalent. Or raise your hand.

A married woman is NEVER addressed or referred to by her husband's name (Herr means Mr, Frau means Mrs):
Example: Herr Thomas Schmidt, Frau Kathrin Schmidt, Herr und Frau Schmidt. But NEVER Frau Thomas Schmidt.

PalenQ

bvlenci - I'd be happy to be called Fräulein any time.>

Only 90+ year old unmarried spinsters expect to be addressed as "Fräulein".>

Fraulein, annhig? Very telling.

Pegontheroad

I recall our bookkeeper at Heidelberg American High School in the 1960's. She was called "Frau" such and such. I always assume that she was single because so many of the men her age had been killed in the war.

I think that's where I first came across this custom.

In the States, we generally call a woman Miss or Mrs. based on her marital status. Thus, when I was 60 years old and still teaching, I was "Miss Coffey."

The alternative, without a distinction between a single or a married woman, would be Ms.

hetismij2

It is the same in Dutch juffrouw, or mejuffrouw (on an envelope for instance) has all but disappeared.
On envelopes now the abreviation is Mw, which could be mejuffrow (miss) or mevrouw (mrs).

Mevrouw is now the normal, formal, term of address for all women.

The only women still regularly called juffrouw, regardless of whether they are married or not, are primary school teachers.

Women here do not tend to take their husbands surname on marriage.

bvlenci

There was a period, on the way from indicating marital status to its extinction, that Fräulein was used as an age indicator.

The use of "signorina" in Italian has taken a similar course.

bvlenci

In Italy, a woman never changes her name at marriage.

StCirq

It went the way of Mademoiselle in French.

Cowboy1968

No, Fräulein never indicated age - also not in the post WWII era when American GIs discovered the "Fräuleinwunder" in Germany.
In the 20th century (until maybe the 1970s), Fräulein was used for unmarried women of all ages, maybe starting around 16. Also 40 yo unmarried women would have been addressed as Fräulein XYZ.
Just because in those decades the majority of young women married at a relatively early age, you would have met more younger Fräuleins than older ones.

lavandula

How, if at all, are children addressed (i.e. on their mail) in Germany? In English (or perhaps this is peculiar to Australia), when I was growing up, mail to a little girl was addressed to 'Miss' and to little boys as 'Master'. I am possibly a little out of touch as I don't really know what happens here at home nowadays - I'm guessing 'Miss' is probably still OK, but 'Master' sounds quite old-fashioned to me now. Maybe people don't use a term of address for children at all nowadays. The only people I know who keep Mrs or Mr in normal daily dealings are my daughter's teachers, and of course we get a term of address on our letters.

Lavandula

Cowboy1968

Actually, this common misconception of the phrase Fräulein by non German speakers is somewhat in the same field as other "faux German" words like

Stein -- means just stone, never used to designate a container for beer
Hock -- no one in Germany will have any clue that you talk about white wine
Brats -- no clue as well that you try to abbreviate bratwurst
Blitz -- means only lightning - if you want to mention the War (consult Fawlty Towers first) you must use it in full as Blitzkrieg.
Angst - is just simple fear, not a medical or psychological condition
Hinterland - not exactly a remote or less populated area, only used when you refer to something else, e.g. The hinterland of Hamburg's port accounts for less than 10pct of the harbor's cargo. But it does not say whether or not many people live there.
uber or über - cannot be used as freely as in English. In German, a sentence like "Berlin, the uber hip capital, attracts more visitors than Hamburg" sounds extremely silly (if you translated it but left the uber in place)
verboten - less common than you think (or fear).. more common would be "nicht gestattet" (not allowed)

Cowboy1968

Lavandula,
A letter addressed to a child would simply omit any "title",
Actually most written correspondence omits the titles, so there is no worrying about Herr, Frau, Fräulein any longer anyway.

lavandula

Hi Cowboy, and thanks for the response. About the words you mention in your next-to-last post - I would understand these to be words borrowed into English where the word has experienced some slight shift in meaning. This is similar to the English words borrowed into German, where some have had a semantic shift (like 'Handy'). I don't necessarily think of all those words as German (like 'hinterland', I think that's pretty integrated into English), but some I do, like 'verboten'. That's interesting about 'stein', though, I didn't realise that has no currency in Germany. What is used instead, are those names regional?

Lavandula

Cowboy1968

All the souvenir shops along the Rhine or in Bavaria will know what you want when you ask for stein
If you used (in German) the sentence "I want to buy a Stein" somewhere else in Germany, it would simply translate to "I want to buy a rock (or stone)".

But, in general, "steins" are pretty uncommon as containers for beverages anyway.
No one uses them in everyday life - beer glass are much more the norm.
Only the 1-liter installments of beer in (Bavarian) beer gardens usually come in what you know as a stein.

The real word for a beer jug is "krug" (kroog) or "seidel" (sydel) -- the latter mostly in Southern Germany, the former everywhere. But usually you would add "beer/bier" in front.

Aramis

With a word/phrase as awesome as "Entschuldigen Sie" who would even want to resort to the English equivalent Cowboy?

Entschuldigen ist ein ausgezeichnetnes Wort!

A German friend of mine laughs every time I say Ausgezeichnet, telling me it isn't really used frequently in Germany. It was a proud day for me then when we sat down for a glass of our favourite Weissbier one day and there, on the table, were Weihenstephaner coasters with "Ausgezeichnet" on them.

I think "verboten" is just overused, as you say, and not really faux. Most English speakers know that it stands for "forbidden" and use it in that context as an exaggeration of the German sense of order.

"Brats" made me laugh out loud. I would pay to see the face of a German waiter or waitress if someone used that to order some wurst.

Cowboy1968

My best moment was when an exchange intern (who spoke excellent German) talked about his mom, making jam from what whatever fruits she had in her garden. And she would always make the jam without preservatives. He assumed that the technical/latin term preservative would be roughly the same in German (as it is usually). But while that term exists also in German, it's everyday meaning is just a BIT different than in English.
So he said (in German) "And my mom would always make the jam without condoms". Which gave us a pretty good laugh..

Aramis.. isn't "Entschuldigen Sie" a bit of a tongue twister for English speakers?
To attract waitstaff's (or anyone else's) attention, a very common "German" word would be "Sorry".
I use it probably 10 times more often than Entschuldigen Sie.