Since so many people seem to misunderstand what I'm saying: "Frau" or "Herr" in German doesn't work as a direct address like it does in English with Sir or Ms. You can use it when talking about someone else, as in "the lady over there" - "die Frau/Dame da drüben" but it doesn't work when addressing someone directly. It has to be "Frau [last name]".

For all of you saying: "It's fine, we say 'Miss' in English, 'señor' in Spanish and 'monsieur' in French", that's cool, but it doesn't exist in German. Just addressing someone with 'frau/herr' makes no sense, it doesn't mean anything. She's not saying it's informal, she's saying it's really not a thing in German.

Back in my German class at school everyone called the teacher "miss frau cook" and she got pretty frustrated regularly with us all essentially calling her "miss miss cook"

In my first German class here in Brazil, this was literally the first thing I learned! My teacher would always repeat how we should adress her Frau + her last name, otherwise we would only be saying "woman" and it could be interpreted as disrespectful.

There's a real surname in German called "Herrmann" which literally translates to "Mr Man". So if you were Herr Herrmann, your name would be Mr Mr Man.

My German teacher would give us sass of we called her Frau alone.

“What was your mother’s maiden name?” “IDK I just knew her as Ma”

I've had the same situation in Goethe institute when I was studying my first level of German, the teacher directly corrected me and told me that I should use the family name after the salutation. That makes complete sense.

We all _knew_ our Spanish teacher's name, but everyone just called him "Señor"

I've never heard of anyone doing this. As a native German speaker, this is highly disturbing to me because nobody does that.

My high school German teacher didn’t do that. Herr Nichols, dude was a badass. Homework just had to be done for full points, we learned juggling when classes were extended for 3 minutes each and he’d leave the room when we were taking tests and bang on the lockers outside of the room when he was coming back to tell us to quit cheating. He made class super fun and I think everyone benefited from that environment.

I heard about a German teacher who didn't want his students addressing him as Herr. His name? Mr. Ball.

We always referred to our French teacher as Madame too! People would say “I really miss Madame”

Im a Turk and my German teacher in Highschool was a cool guy, said refering to him with just his name was fine. Though we mostly called him Kaiser Gökdağ which he seemed to enjoy alot.

In Germany/Austria/Switzerland it would be seen as pretty disrespectful to call someone „Frau“ or „Herr“ without their name. It was common to refer to a younger unmarried woman as „Fräulein“ (Miss) but that’s outdated and no one does that anymore.

Yessss! I had the same problem with my AP Spanish teacher, every one just called her Profe which is literally just short for professor(a), obviously meaning professor or teacher

I'm happy to say, I learned alot from 'Herr Finch.' Never heard 'Herr' not accompanied by a name. Love your videos.

German teacher here. Teachers don’t typically instruct their students to call them Herr or Frau; usually what happens is that since their German teacher is the only teacher students address using this title, the title itself just becomes the way they refer to that teacher. It’s the same way that they might address their P.E. teacher simply as Coach. Cheers.

I'm a German teacher in NJ and yes, this is common with German teachers here, too. I introduce myself as Frau Lauzon. Though they learn this means Ms. or Mrs, Frau becomes a nickname. The teachers aren't doing it - it originates from the students. No one I know corrects this, since it's always used in a friendly, familiar way and never with disrespect. It may have caught on because most students had Spanish in earlier grades and it's common practice to just say "Señora. " I think it also reflects the closer relationship German teachers enjoy with their students, since there are usually only one of two German teachers in a school and we get to have the same students over multiple years. Since it's a habit they may start in their first year, they don't yet pronounce the r well, and they tend to continue saying it this way. Sometimes I tease them about their AmeRican R when they say FRau! I hope that helps!

When I was in Spanish in highschool we would refer to our Spanish teacher as just 'Señora' when we talked about her outside of class. So I could see the same happening in other languages.

“They’re the ones that know German” not my German teacher😂😂😂I learned more from an exchange student friend in the first few weeks of knowing her than I did in two years in my German class.That teach was the worst teacher and worst person….but that’s a whole different story

“My teacher’s name is Mrs. She has another name too, but I just like Mrs and that’s all.” - Junie B Jones

😅😂 this is funny! I never took german classes but learned Frau drom listening to German online classes (greetings/conversations)

I'm from Sweden, and in junior high I had a German teacher who was fluent in german due to her living there in her youth. She referred to herself as "frau Steiner", and that's what we had to call her during the german language classes. So she did everything right 👍🏻 She very often complimented me for my german pronunciations. "The best in the whole class" of about 30 kids😅 I was 13 to 15 when I had her classes so it felt pretty awkward, but now I feel proud for it. A woman at my workplace grew up in Germany too, and we speak german with each other very often, and she often compliments my german even though I don't get any chances to use it very often so it has dropped off a bit.

Frau was the best German teacher we all had.

My German teacher was Frau Flynn. I joined the German Club because she gave us free gummi bears 😊

us who calls our teacher as ma'am/sir : 👀

In America, it wasn't that uncommon to call someone just Miss, or Mister back when people had one teacher for most of their childhood. (kids would often drop out as young as 12-13 and start working!) You were supposed to know their name, but it's not that weird for someone to not remember.

I never even knew that. I took three years of German in high school, and everyone, even people who didn't take German, knew the teacher as Herr Mangan. He got his degree in Germany and lived there for like 10 or 15 years. Real interesting guy that knew a lot about German culture and society. Didn't learn a lot of German in his class, though. 😂 still, enjoyed the time I had in the class. The most funny moment I ever had in his class was when some freshman walked by his class at the beginning of the year, dumbfounded and perplexed about hearing another language other than English. Herr Mangan noticed the kid and said, "Habt eine gute Fahrte" or however it is spelled, and the kid just stared at him for like two seconds and replied with, "Did you just say fart?". 😂😂😂

I went on an exchange to the midwest and they called their teacher „Frau“ too and at first I always thought that they would be calling her „Kraut“, which honestly would’ve been funny

It can be cultural too. I taught in an inner city school and most kids called me Miss.

Hey Feli! This made me laugh so hard. Yes, I do this. 25 years in, and still do. I think I accepted it back then because my Spanish and French teaching colleagues went by "Señora" or "Madame," so I didn't want to feel left out. 😂

In "real" german schools, if you say Frau to a teacher, she will send you to the corner. The meaning is woman, but when you say it to a teacher without the last name, it's like you are insulting her.

If you say "Frau" alone, it actually means "woman". Not "Miss" anymore.

Greetings from lower Manhattan! I enjoyed your review of your visit here!Brava!

My German professor referred to herself as Frau Kolb. I loved Frau Kolb 🥰 (R.I.P)

I always remember my German teacher Frau Decker. She taught me so much and took the German club to Germany. Some of the best times in high school.

As a fellow German, I often miss a way in our language to call someone without knowing their name, just like Madame/Monsieur in French or Sir/Madam/Miss in English. Unless of course you are ok with sounding really old-fashioned, then you can just use "der Herr" or "die Dame", or even, when speaking to a male waiter, "Herr Ober".

In England we call our teachers miss or sir like I might say to a friend “miss set us some homework yesterday”

At least we’re taught that it means “mrs” and use “Frau Lehrerin.”

Same thing with my Spanish teacher. We all called him “Señor”. When anyone asks me what his name was I always say Señor instead of his name! 😭

My German teacher's name was Herr Chandler.... sometimes we'd call him Chair Handler.... because we were dumb highschool kids... He's a really nice guy though, he still wishes me happy birthday every year on facebook. I had a lot of fun in his class, I wish I remembered more of what he taught me though.

Frau Kern would have ignored you until you addressed her properly. She was a great teacher.

Waaaay back in school we would refer to our German instructor as “the Herr”. This always drove my sister in law crazy (she is a Deutschlander). I love your explanations of some of the origins of German words and phrases. It adds to my German language experience and understanding. Please keep it up

My high school German teacher didn't do that we said his last name after Herr. Maybe it's just kids who aren't paying attention and think that's all you need lol

While in high school we called our German teacher "Frau". It was kind of a term of endearment. We didn't really care that it made no sense. We used it kind of like a nickname. Most German teachers I know who allow this started out trying to stop the students from doing it, but it eventually became a losing battle and the students just called them Frau anyway. My students call me "Herr Antrim" and it is pretty rare that someone tries to call me just "Herr". It is more common for a student to just call me "Antrim" than it is to just call me "Herr". I do get a lot of emails through my KZfaq account addressed to "Herr". Occasionally they go so far as to call me "Mr. Herr Antrim". I almost always ignore those emails, as they clearly didn't pay attention. It is a great way to sort out spam emails. My social media usernames were chosen for similarly dumb reasons. I use "MrLAntrim" on almost all of my social networks, because I would often get emails from parents addressed to "Mr. Lantrim", because my email address is my first initial (Levi) and my last name (Antrim).

We've watched you for years now, but I just stumbled on this short tonight and had to comment. YES! We live in Michigan and my son is in his 4th year of German. He's had 3 different teachers and all 3 refer to themselves as Frau. His current teacher even has close family ties to Switzerland, so I don't get it. Back in the early 80's I referred to my teacher as Fraulein Swanberg, so maybe it's a recent thing? Love your channel, Feli! My two oldest boys will be traveling to Europe (Germany included) in June with their high school and I'm so excited for them!

This is something that happens in a lot of language classes. Italian teachers will often go by Prof and French teachers by Madame. I think it’s more just something they do to drill into students’ heads the word for miss so that they always know to use it when addressing a teacher

I mean, my spanish Social Studies teacher insists we call him, “Profe” and my Spanish LA teacher is “Sita”

I noticed this with my high school German classmates. It occurred much less in my college German classes.

This always bugged the daylights out of me.I taught German in college and so many students who'd had German in high school did this. I always brought this up the first day, when you go over basic classroom stuff--kind of like Jerry Lewis' "Hey lady"! It worked pretty well.

Lmao same thing with my Filipino class in high school. We would refer to our Ginang (Gng) as just Ginang rather than Gng. Garcia (substituted the last name to something different). Quick little lesson (correct me if I’m wrong) but Ginang means Mrs. and Ginoo means Mr.

not uni, but in high school we called our teachers “miss” for female teachers and “sir” for male ones. it also depended on the person, some of them preferred being called their full “mr/ms.lastname” but whenever it was directly to the teachers it was normally miss and sir.

I studied German while in High School in San Diego. My teacher was Frau Close. NEVER have I or anyone else who had her class ever address her without adding her last name. This was in 1985 and that was a long time ago, but goodness, good teaching goes a long way.

In grade school & junior high, yes. Later it was Inga, Marcus, Michelle, & Doktor Trautwein! (can't believe I remembered)

My German teacher at Augustana college was named Herr Weber

I took German in Texas and my teacher went by herr kniess , Kniess being his last name. So I assume it’s based how well the teacher uses the word in class and/or how well the students understand to meaning of frau/herr and understand it’s application.

We did that with our high school Spanish teacher. Everyone called him Profe, which is professor

My high school Spanish teacher just called herself Señora

We did that in Spanish class in high school. We called our teacher Sen~Ora. We knew her name and to other people, we would refer to her as Sen~ora Sargeant, but in class it was just Sen~ora.

Based on my (very limited) experience, I don't think it's something German teachers do; I think it's something STUDENTS do. As another commenter has said, it's a nickname of sorts. Sort of like, if a teacher had a doctoral degree, they'd be formally known as Dr. Lastname, but they might be affectionately referred to as "Doc."

In England (especially secondary school) we call our teachers ‘miss’ and ‘sir’ all the time but we still know their last name and we’ll use it if we’re telling someone who they are.

I think that's a common troupe in American language learning classes as a whole bc I remember my Spanish teachers always introduced themselves as señora or profesora, profe for short.

My excellent German teacher at Anderson High School referred to himself as Herr Williams but he was popular even among students who didn’t take German. His popular name with students was “The Hair”

My mandarin teacher did this, we just called her Lao Shi (literally just “teacher”) since she was the only teacher we called Lao Shi(she was the only one who taught mandarin in our school) we didn’t rlly have to use her name to differentiate her from other teachers

In my HS German classes my teachers wanted to be called “Frau Conklin” and “Herr Hablutzel” to this day I still refer to them as such. However, in Mexico the teachers like to be called “Maestra/ Maestro” sometimes in addition to their first name. That was my experience, anyway.

My German professor referred to himself a Herr Doktor Professor .

I had two Deutsch teachers in my schooling, Frau Hauser and Herr Peters. They were both wonderful but Herr Peters was quite the linguist. He spoke many languages and always took the time to nurture my interest in learning German and its finer points, including colloquialisms and a few curse words! That was over 30 years ago.

in the uk we just call our high school teachers miss or sir and then we use their names when we’re specify who we’re talking about

In England we say “oi miss” or “hey sir” when speaking directly to a teacher, but not about a teacher, usually mrs Smith

I think you are witnessing one wonderful wonders the evolution of linguistics, where languages are known to change over time and it shows up more than ever when people are learning a second, where no matter how well you teach someone the right way to speak a language, they find a reason modify it. Just like there is a difference in how object are named in American english and some words are spelled differently, compare to how they are said and spelled in british english.

I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio and its good to know Frau Van Abbama (I probably miss spelled her last name but it was almost 20 years ago) was teaching us properly.

Called my French teacher “Madame” in high school. She’s French French. I’ve been graduated for over a decade but still whenever I happen to run into her back home I still refer to her as Madame and she still answers to it. She’s a nice lady

Didn't have that issue learning German. I still remember the surnames of all my German teachers growing up.

My high school German teacher didn’t do this and I’d be confused if my teacher had but luckily she didn’t

🤣 The way you express "Huh???" like nope, that's way off.

We used to call our French teacher 'Madame' but as a form of endearment. Greetings from Germany😊

I am American and studied German in college back in the Stone Age. My professors were American, German and Austrian and referred to themselves as Frau or Herr plus their last name. In recent years, I have noticed several of my teacher friends (not teaching German at all) tell stories about their students and they usually quote their students as referring to them as Miss or Ms. I also find that strange and don’t recall any of my classmates or I ever doing that. Granted, neither of my parents were born in the US and I’m an older generation, but teachers were typically addressed with the title and last name.

In Italy we have this thing in which soccer coaches are called just "mister" because uncle upon a time a coach from inter had a surname too difficult to pronounce for Italian

My German teacher back in high school called herself Frau Dunn. She was also my maths teacher. In math class she was Ms Dunn

My high school German teacher went by Herr Raver and college German professor went by Frau Deren. I don't ever remember someone calling either of them just Herr or Frau.

We used to refer to our Spanish teachers as “señora.” So I think it may be an American thing, but not uniquely in German class.

even weirder still, many of my Hebrew teachers would just go by "Morah" (obviously in hebrew) but it literally just means teacher so I'd just be sitting in class like "teacher I have a question" which is weird when you translate it

We always called my German teacher Frau but we always knew that wasn’t the proper way to address her. It was just our nickname instead of calling her “Frau *Last Name*” Other students who took Spanish instead of German, however were convinced Frau was her first name 😭😂

In my school we call the teachers “teacher” like literally that’s it, unless you wanna be fancy so you call her teacher [name] (it was an all girls school btw)

When I lived in Brazil we just called the teacher “miss”, and people got really annoyed with me when I moved to the US because the habit stuck.

In high school we called our German teacher Frau. It was kind of a nickname/term of endearment. She didn't mind.

It's not everywhere in the US that does this, my German teachers in middle and high school referred to themselves as Frau Connelly, Herr Levine and Frau Harding and expected us to refer to them as such. We could also refer to Herr Levine and Frau Harding as Monsieur Levine and Mademoiselle Harding as they were both also French teachers, and Mr. Levine would also go by Magister Levine as he was also a Latin teacher. Sometimes we'd even joke around and refer to Mr. Levine as "Monsieur Herr Magister Levine", or "Mr. Mr. Teacher Levine."

That’s just like the rich girl in class like “umm so Ms Teacher Lady? Can I like skip the test cause my tutors who do my homework for me can’t come because of your icky rules?”

Im german and i just thought how wierd that would be if i go to any of my teachers and just call them Frau or Herr 😂

My high school German teacher was always Frau Sloan. She was American and grew up in a small German speaking farm community in the middle of nowhere Washington State. The town was settled by Volga Germans (Wolgadeutsche) in the late 1800s when they decided it was best to leave Russia/Ukraine. Many German speaking immigrants to the US actually came from Russia.

In my German grammar class, her name was frau Barkley. Since we learned German grammar like English we learned all the rules and verb placements and what was considered proper German and normal German.

Kind of sounds like when students just call their teacher "Teach" instead of his or her real name!

My German teacher was Herr Knörr. I miss that man, was so kind and funny and made sure all of us were on the same page. I do believe he used to be a professional German basketball player back in the day he said. And the year he was hired was also the year the school was getting a new basketball head coach too. A lot of people thought he was the basketball teacher cause of his build and height. He would just get all intense and be like, I’m the new German Teacher. Short story: I also remember how we had to do a presentation in German and this one person thought it would be a WONDERFUL idea on doing one on the Man that dictated Germany in WW2. The PowerPoint loaded on the screen and before she could get one word out he turned it off. Basically as a HOW DARE YOU, then he expressed why he was extremely disappointed and upset. He was a black man and you know, not only Jewish heritage was sent to the camps. That was a intense day. And honestly I wouldn’t even think about making a presentation on that monster, so I don’t feel bad that he kinda let the person hear all his frustration. But I mean, he explained why it made him furious in the most respectful way I’ve ever seen ; I have mad respect for Herr Knörr. Same day someone did a presentation over their Long Board and at the end of the presentations he asked if he can try riding it. The student kept trying to tell him how to ride it and you just hear him go, “Hey, I got this, I’m a athlete.” I cried from laughing 😂 I hope the best for that Man, and I hope his family is doing okay. And I hope his kid is still into anime, haha!

My German teacher in Covington went by Frau Gerlach, but a lot of students just shortened it to Frau outside of class. In class, she taught that it went with her name, not by itself. It was the students who did the shortening.

This is interesting. My brother and I both had the same German teacher in junior high . We still refer to her as Frau Haugo.

My German teachers in High School made it a point to teach us this.

We had this with the Japanese teacher at my highschool! There were two Japanese women whose last names were both German names that started with S, and so we usually just called them both "Sensei" rather than "Sensei S(1)" and "Sensei S(2)" to make it easier. Eventually one moved away, so the remaining one became the sole Sensei. That was just her name and how we knew her, and she loved it, and totally encouraged it. I heard after I graduated, an American teacher fluent in Japanese joined as a second Japanese teacher and also wanted to be called just Sensei but nobody would do it- she was always Sensei So-n-so, because by that point, only Sensei was the one true Sensei. (Lol that last part looks clear as mud all typed out. Basically, the original teacher was now totally embodied just by the title Sensei to the point it became her name, so no one else called the other teacher that because it would have been like calling this new teacher by someone else's name, if that makes sense!)

In my childhood in Germany we’d have teachers come to the class so many times a week and teach us German, Herr Horn was my favorite. I can’t remember Frau actual name unless I look it up in my yearbook, they alternated. Now, in high school we were back in the states and I switched to German because I was somewhat familiar and after a French exchange student came to my French class and told me our French teachers pronunciations was wrong we both switched to German taught by Herr Lutz. I hadn’t experienced any teacher going by Herr or Frau in America without their last name included but I can’t say I’m surprised to hear this🤔. I love Germany, miss the country and people, only regret is we didn’t get to stay longer. ♥️ Hanau

Some Irish school teachers do exactly that too. We literally called our geography teacher Mrs and our technical drawing teacher Sir