Random fact

[pne]

Every personal pronoun except the first person singular may be used to adress a single person in German:

2nd singular "Du":

informal

3rd singular "Er/Sie":

formal, with the connotation of an aristocrat talking to a subject (unusual nowadays)

1st plural "Wir":

formal, a doctor or nurse talking to his patient (usual in this context, unusual in every other)

2nd plural "Ihr":

formal, talking to an aristocrat (unusual nowadays)

3rd plural "Sie":

the standard formal form ;)

(Stolen from xhirra in this comment in linguaphiles)

Comments

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

Well, about a year and a half ago you had that table about the use of personal pronouns and I pointed out that the phrase "Wie geht's mir denn?" doesn't seem exactly unusual to me. If you count it, then you can use any person to address a single person in German. :P

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I may have to show this to my German teacher, if you don't mind (she's from Germany, but isn't a linguist, so I doubt she's thought of it in these terms).

[pne.livejournal.com]

Hey, be my guest - it's really xhirra whom you should ask since I simply stole their comment and pasted it into my journal (except that I added 'nurses' to the 'wir' bit; they only had 'doctors' listed).