What is used more in German? Formal or Imformal?

Question

Is formal or informal speech used in german more?
As in, would you use
Wie geht es ihnen be used more than Wie geht es dir?

Answer 1

In my experience, working in a business environment in Germany, Sie was used almost universally among the employees. Only a couple of them who got to know me in social settings used du with me - it felt like quite an accomplishment to get to that point.

Other environments might be different.

Du is commonly used - even among strangers - but I would assume that it would mark you as a lower-class speaker.

Use Sie in all situations unless you know that du would be acceptable. If in a more social, educational setting - as with students - I imagine it would be easier to get to the du familiarity.

I also understand that in the former East Germany - there was a socialist/communist attempt to break down class barriers and that the use of Sie was frowned upon, so the use of Sie may be different among the Ossies. If a native German speaker familiar with the issue would comment, I would be curious if this is in fact the case. The intermingling of East and West now may have accellerated the decline of using Sie???

Answer 2

It totally depends on the situation and the people you talk to. Informal speech is used with friends and in the family, when talking to children or among young people. Nowadays university students use informal speech among each other even if they don't know each other, at many workplaces all the colleages say du to each other... it has changed, it wasn't that way some decades ago. I'm 26 years old now and really not very much used to being addressed with Sie expect for in real formal situations like at offices or when a professor talks to me or something like this, or if some complete stranger asks me something on the street or so.
You should use the Sie when you talk to complete strangers who are significantly older than you, or if it's in an office or something like this, but otherwise the Du is really very common.

Answer 3

This is not easy to answer. Generally I would say I use the one way as often as the other, but the rate will be rather different from person to person. It depends on the usual social contacts. I would never start informal speech to an adult person I don't have any private contact to. But the rules may vary. Look and listen at first. In forums like this it's normal that people say "du" to each other right from the start.

Answer 4

Formal!!! I am not German but had German at highschool and one of the first things I was told that German are very formal in their speech, even if they have known each other for many years some people still use the formal form Sie, always use this form when talking to grown-up strangers!