Love, Excellence and Greetings

Sometimes it seems Germans spend an awful lot of time worrying about coming across as too "German."

I mean this in a cultural-linguistic way: Germans know they have this reputation for being blunt and brusque, dispensing with the social niceties and "small talk" that Anglophones so value. And since they know that, they also worry about doing it without even meaning to. My English students often ask if they can say this or that in such a way, or if that's too rude and "German."

Then just yesterday, another client of mine (at a design agency, where I do some editing and proofreading when they write in English) related that she'd set up a meeting with an American client, and wrote him that the agreed upon time would be "fine."

The American wrote back, "It's not fine, it's excellent!"

When my client told me this story, I could practically hear her sighing and thinking, Oh, for goodness sake, what cultural expectation have I failed to meet this time?

But she kept her wits about her and wrote him back this explanation: "Fine is 99% of perfect, for Germans."

. . . . .

Then on the other side of the spectrum, there's the odd matter of "Liebe Grüße." This is a common letter closing among friends – more or less translatable as "love," though perhaps not exactly.

"Grüße" are "greetings" and in German you can have endless permutations of them: loving greetings, heartfelt greetings, lovely greetings, sunny greetings or even the always popular "many greetings" ("Viele Grüße"), which are clearly offered in the plural yet of no specified type.

In a business context, you're best off sticking with the standard formula of "mit freundlichen Grüßen" ("with friendly greetings") or, if you feel a little less formal with the person in question, perhaps "beste Grüße" ("best greetings"). (Note to any German readers: Am I right, or is "beste Grüße" in fact just as formal as the good old "MFG"?)

"Liebe Grüße" is the most personal you can go, unless perhaps you delve further into other love-related closings – "Alles Liebe" (more or less "lots of love") or even "hab dich lieb" ("I love you" ... except, this being German, it's not even literally "I love you," just "I have love for you" or "I'm fond of you").

In my mind, because "Liebe Grüße" is more or less equatable with "love" (even if it's not really the same) it's not something I would ever use with business contacts. Yet I now have some clients (young, hip Germans) who I've never even met in person, who end every communication with "Liebe Grüße"!

Yes, Germany, the land where you can spend half an hour trying to draft a work-related email because you know how important it is that it use just the right proper forms of address – or you can spend nearly as long puzzling over why people you've never met are sending you love.

. . . . .

Update: Precisely this topic (the hierarchy of letter closings in German) came up the other night with friends, and when I mentioned how strange it was when people I didn't even know started signing their emails with "Liebe Grüße," one of the Germans decreed: You can write that once you've at least talked to the person on the phone once.