How can non-native speakers improve politeness in German

To improve politeness in German as a non-native speaker, here are some key tips:

• Use formal address: German distinguishes between formal (Sie) and informal (du). Always use the formal version (Sie) with strangers, elders, and in professional settings to show respect and politeness.

• Employ polite phrases and modal particles: Common polite expressions include “bitte” (please), “danke” (thank you), and modal particles like “doch”, “mal”, “bitte schön” that soften requests and make them more courteous.

• Use indirect speech and questions: Instead of direct commands, use polite questions or indirect formulations such as “Könnten Sie…” (Could you…) or “Wären Sie so freundlich…” (Would you be so kind…).

• Pay attention to tone and register: Politeness in German also involves speaking clearly and respectfully, avoiding slang in formal contexts.

• Utilize greetings and leave-taking properly: German culture attaches importance to polite greetings and farewells; use “Guten Tag”, “Auf Wiedersehen”, and similar phrases appropriately.

Following these strategies helps non-native speakers align with German social and linguistic norms of politeness in various contexts. ^{1, 2, 3}

References

• Linguistic Politeness and Greeting Rituals in German-speaking Switzerland

• The Main Features of the Concept of POLITENESS in the German Linguistic World-Image

• THE STUDENTS PERCEPTION OF LANGUAGE POLITENESS – BASED TEACHING MATERIALS IN SPEAKING SKILLS AT GERMAN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT PATTIMURA UNIVERSITY AMBON

• Teaching particular languages

• The effect of functional-analytic teaching on aspects of French immersion students’ sociolinguistic competence. Applied

• Facilitating the Communication of Politeness through Fine-Grained Paraphrasing

• Comparing Styles across Languages: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Politeness

• Politeness as a feature: so important and so rare.

• GenPADS: Reinforcing politeness in an end-to-end dialogue system

• Politeness Transfer: A Tag and Generate Approach

• A Computational Approach to Politeness with Application to Social Factors

• Teaching Politeness Strategies

• TyDiP: A Dataset for Politeness Classification in Nine Typologically Diverse Languages

• GenPADS: Reinforcing politeness in an end-to-end dialogue system

• Politeness speech act in the movie character “Toni Erdmann” by Maren Ade: A Pragmatic study and its relevance in learning German at school

• Politeness Strategies through Language Power and Style-Based Communication

• TyDiP: A Dataset for Politeness Classification in Nine Typologically Diverse Languages

• The Positive Politeness Strategies Found In Ferdinand Movie 2017