'haben,' 'sein,' and Personal Pronouns: Lesson

'haben' and 'sein'

Now let's look at the present tense of sein and haben because sein and haben are definitely the most frequently used verbs in German, as with English to be and to have. This is because they are used as auxiliaries to form several tenses. You see that sein is quite "irregular" as in English.

You have already encountered some of their forms in our text. Here you have all the forms of the present tense.

Remember, the formal is identical with the 3rd person plural. However, you capitalize Sie.

Take a good look at the table above, and get used to the way it is laid out. You will be seeing many such tables for verbs this year. After the first chapter, however, we will stop including the 2nd person formal - you will have to figure that one out for yourself.

Formal or Polite Address

A German speaker uses the third person plural pronouns (and the appropriate verb forms) when addressing someone politely. In writing, the pronouns are capitalized.

As you read the dialogues, or the online cultural materials, or watch German films or television, notice the use of this form (easy to pick out in writing because of the capitalized pronouns). The usage changes with every decade, but you need to grasp the kinds of situations in which Germans feel it is important to use this respectful kind of speech.

The "Sie" form is necessary when speaking to a stranger, a superior, an older person. Sometimes this person will ask you to switch to the "du" form, a sign of friendliness.

The "du" form implies equality and intimacy, but it has also historically suggested that one is addressing one's inferior. Therefore, in situations where one is in some way superior (adult to child, CEO to blue-collar worker, etc.) it is more polite to use the "Sie" form, as a sign of respect.

English used to have this distinction. The pronoun "you" was the plural of the second person, and it also served as our formal pronoun for showing respect; the intimate form was "thou" (with its own verb endings, and the accusative/dative "thee", possessive "thy/thine").

One of the outrageous quirks of the Quakers or Friends that got them thrown out of England was their refusal to use the respectful pronouns to address social superiors.

Eventually the need for an intimate or less respectful form of address disappeared from English-speaking cultures, and with it the pronouns. We respect everyone, and we are even polite to the dog. The last person to be addressed intimately was God himself, in Christian prayers.

If you examine the opening scenes of Shakespeare's Hamlet, you will see the fluid use of "you" and "thou" in Elizabethan English.

• The guards on watch address each other politely as "you", except that Bernardo says to Francesco, as if to a child, "get thee to bed." But when the ghost appears, all are startled into intimacy and use the informal pronouns in speaking to each other.
• Horatio (and later Hamlet) addresses the king's ghost as "thou," and it walks away offended; one feels that the less respectful form of address implies disbelief that the ghost is really the king. A king's son would not use "thou" to his father.
• In the next scene, Claudius uses another formal pronoun, the "royal we," in speaking of himself as the king in the plural ("it pleases us"); this irritates Hamlet, of course.
• Claudius and Hamlet address each other formally, but Gertrude speaks to Hamlet using "thou" consistently, as if he were a little boy.
• When Claudius speaks to Laertes, or Hamlet to his old friend Horatio, they move sometimes from "you" to "thou," but the courtiers all use the respectful "you" to speak to the king or the prince.
• Both Laertes and Polonius use "you" in advising Ophelia, which gives their conversation a higher tone. But Polonius's famous speech advising Laertes, "to thine own self be true" is addressed by a father to his son as child.

You can see again from this that what we learn as grammar can have important social and emotional resonances.