Your questions
Nancy G. aus Neustadt fragt:
Wie schreibe/spreche ich meinen neuen amerikanischen Chef auf Englisch an, beispielsweise wenn ich eine E-Mail an ihn verfassen oder eine Nachricht auf dem Anrufbeantworter hinterlassen muss?
Ich bin da etwas unsicher und „duzen“ erscheint mir unangebracht. Sehe ich das vielleicht zu eng, ist es vielleicht sogar üblich ihn mit Vornamen anzusprechen?
Answer:
In the US and UK, practically everybody is on first name terms. You will rarely find a secretary who calls her boss Mr Smith, or so on. I once worked for a “Sir”, but called him Keith, and he called me Jean. I also worked with a professor at Cambridge university. His students called him Greg and he, of course, called them by their first names. You cannot say this is “duzen” because there is only one form. Whenever I phone a bank, an insurance company or any other business in the UK, people answer with their first name only.
I noticed this only last week when I phoned a big international insurance company. The woman said, “This is Marion at XYZ-Insurance.
Can I help you?”
Even people who phone to sell you something call you by your first
name. So I would go ahead and call him by his first name.