[TurboHaskal]

I always struggled with this in Germany as a foreigner.

Coming from a country in which the so called formal form changed significantly in the last decades and is now reserved to people you don't want to get along with (that's how politicians refer to members of other parties, or how customer support starts to address you after you tell them that you want to quit the contract), I always ended up using the informal form, which translated into many funny stares.

[eru]

Many people who formally learn German as a second language (as opposed to just picking it up on the spot) seem to default to Sie. I guess that's what they teach in the Goethe institute.

Defaulting to Sie seems like a safe default. At worst you get some funny looks for being overly formal, but you don't insult anyone.

[xnyan]

I don’t think it’s just German. When I started learning Russian, 95% of what I was taught was on вы (plural/formal you). When you’re a beginner you really lean on stock phrases and bits you learned in class, so when I moved to Kharkov everything I said was formal for about six months. It took a year before I really stopped speaking to children or pets formally. It makes sense I guess, if you’re not sure formal is probably safer than informal (although speaking to someone formally when you should be speaking informally can also be insulting.)

It’s not just knowing when to use formal/informal - native speakers often forget this but in languages with verbs that conjugate, a beginner learner may not be as good with the Du conjugations as they are with Sie. Again, when you are just starting with the language or you’re not confident you lean on repeating things you’ve learned and if you were taught Sie then that’s what you do.

[eru]

> It makes sense I guess, if you’re not sure formal is probably safer than informal (although speaking to someone formally when you should be speaking informally can also be insulting.)

You get lots of leeway on the latter as a foreigner.

[xnyan]

Very true, however I’ve noticed in pretty much every culture speaking the lingua franca poorly often means you are treated nicely but not very seriously.

[foepys]

It's also easier. When using "Sie" you need to use the infinitive form of the verb ("brauchen Sie etwas?", "werden Sie das so machen?") while when using "Du" you need to use the very special and complicated 2nd person form ("brauchst Du was?", "wirst Du das so machen?").

[eru]

Agreed in practice. I think in theory, it's not the infinitive form of the verb; just identical in most cases.

You can see that with 'to be': infinitive form is 'sein', but 'Sie sind'.

[cies]

> At worst you get some funny looks for being overly formal

Yups. The young dont like it. But I was educated to do it, hard to throw that out.