Letter writing – LEARN TO SPEAK GERMAN

If you were to write a letter to someone in the German-speaking world and you used the format used in writing a letter in English, your letter would undoubtedly arrive at its destination and be understood. The German and English formats are quite similar. But to be precise and to conform to the style preferred by German speakers, you need to know how the German format differs.

The address

On an envelope, the first line of an address is the addressee’s title, followed by his or her name. Remember that Frau is used for both married and unmarried women, since the title Fräulein (Miss) is no longer in use. The next line in the address of an envelope contains the street and number, and that is followed by the Postleitzahl (zip code) and the city. Note that Straße is often abbreviated as Str. and the title Doktor can be abbreviated as Dr.:

Herrn Frau Professor
Martin Keller Inge Bauer
Buchwaldstr. 92 Königsallee 14
79301 Freiburg 30890 Hannover

If you are writing from outside of a German-speaking country to an address in either Switzerland, Austria, or Germany, you need to add the letters CH for Switzerland, A for Austria, or D for Germany before the zip code, for example: D-79301 Freiburg.

In a business letter written to someone at a company, the word Firma (company) is followed on the next line by the name of the company. Use the abbreviation z. H. (zu Händen) as the equivalent of attention in English:
Firma Firma
Altdorf AG Karl Benz
z.H. Herrn Martin Keller Finanzabteilung (finance department)
Buchwaldstr. 92 Königsallee 14
79301 Freiburg 30890 Hannover

On the envelope of a business letter it is common to skip a line between the street address and the line with the zip code and city.
The sender’s address appears on the back of the envelope, preceded by the word Absender or the abbreviation Abs:

Abs.
L. Baumann
Kalckreuthweg 7
20412 Hamburg-Othmarschen

The body of a letter

In both an informal German letter and a German business letter, the sender often does not write his or her address at the top of the letter. In a letter written from a business, the letter would be written on letterhead paper, which would provide the sender’s information in that way. And in terms of personal letters, many people have personalized stationery, which
usually gives their address at the top of the sheet.
Whether or not the letter was written on letterhead, at the top right of an informal letter or
a business letter you will find the sender’s location (usually the city) written on the line with the date and separated from it by a comma:

Bremen, den 7. 11. 2008

Remember that the order of the numbers in a date is day, then month, then year (den 7. 11. 2008 / the seventh of November, 2008). It is common to use the abbreviation d. in place of the article den:

Oldenburg, d. 22. 9. 2009
The salutation (die Anrede) comes next. In the case of a letter to a friend or relative, the
word Lieber/Liebe (dear) is used with a first name, but unlike the English word dear, it cannot be used with a plural. Each person in the salutation is greeted individually. For example:

Lieber Thomas Dear Thomas
Liebe Tina Dear Tina
Lieber Thomas, liebe Tina Dear Thomas and Tina

However, if no name is used, and close friends or relatives are being addressed as a group, it is possible to use Meine Lieben (my dears).

In the text of the letter, it used to be the custom to capitalize the informal pronouns for you

(du, dich, dein, ihr, euch, and euer). This is no longer the case, but you will still occasionally see the capitalized forms in letters written by someone from an older generation or by someone not accepting of the new rules of writing (die neue Rechtschreibung).

There are three basic ways of closing an informal letter:

Herzliche Grüße Yours (truly)
Mit herzlichen Grüßen Yours truly, Kind regards
Alles Liebe With love, All my love

It is common to follow these kinds of informal closings with dein or deine and your first name. In a formal letter that is not necessarily a business letter, the salutation Lieber/Liebe can be used with the title and last name of the person to whom you are writing:

Lieber Herr Benz

Liebe Frau Schmidt

If you are writing to a company, its name and address appear at the top left of the page. Just below that address, you can add a brief statement that describes the purpose of your letter:

Verkehrsverein Köln e. V.

Bahnhofstr. 18

56011 Köln

Hotels in Köln

In this kind of business letter, a more formal salutation is required. Note that different adjective endings are needed for the masculine and feminine:

Sehr geehrter Herr Keller
Sehr geehrte Frau Professor
Sehr geehrter Herr Doktor Hauser (academic)
Sehr geehrte Frau Doktor (physician)

In the first example above, the last name of the party being addressed is included, because the only title used is Herr. But if the person holds an additional title (as in the second example), the title and not the last name is used in a formal salutation. There is, however, an exception: If the last name is included with the title Doktor, this implies that the doctor being addressed is an academic and not a physician. If the party being addressed is a physician, the doctor’s name is not included.

It is possible to use the formal salutation with a plural:
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren Dear Sir or Madam / Ladies and Gentlemen
In formal letters, the pronoun for you is Sie, and its forms are always capitalized in the text of the letter (Ihnen and Ihr). There are three commonly used closings for a formal letter:
Mit freundlichen Grüßen Yours sincerely, Yours truly
Mit freundlichen Empfehlungen With kind regards, Yours faithfully
Hochachtungsvoll Yours faithfully (very formal)
It is common to place Ihr or Ihre (yours) after the closing line and just before your name, but
that is an option:
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Ihr
Thomas Keller

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Ihre
Sabine Schneider
Whether writing an informal or a formal letter, there are two ways of punctuating the salutation: with a comma or with an exclamation point. If you use a comma, the first line of your letter will begin with a word that starts with a small letter, because the salutation is considered to be part of the sentence that follows it:
Lieber Rolf, Dear Rolf,
es tut mir Leid, dass ich so lange gewartet I’m sorry that I’ve waited so long to answer
habe deinen Brief zu beantworten…. your letter. . . .
If you punctuate your salutation with an exclamation point, the first line of your letter will begin with a capital letter:
Lieber Rolf! Dear Rolf,
Es tut mir Leid, dass ich so lange … I’m sorry that I’ve waited so long . . .
The modern way

Some new and rather trendy ways of opening and closing a letter have developed. You should be aware of them, but be careful to use them only when appropriate. If you are writing to a friend or relative, you can begin your letter with a casual salutation, such as:

Hallo Tina! Hi, Tina,
The closing of the letter would then normally also be casual:
Liebe Grüße Best regards,

This casual format can also be used with people whose relationship to you is more formal.

For example:

Hallo Frau Keller!
…
Liebe Grüße

Even a formal or business letter can have a more up-to-date salutation and closing:
Guten Tag, Herr Schmidt,
…
Freundliche Grüße

And if you do not have a specific addressee, you can still use a more modern salutation and

closing:

Guten Tag!
…
Freundliche Grüße

In letters that are typed, your signature will follow the closing of the letter. It is important to type your name after your signature, so that the recipient of your letter knows precisely who you are and doesn’t have to decipher your signature. If you have a job title, that will follow your name:

Mit freundlichen Grüßen Yours sincerely,
(Ihre Unterschrift) (your signature)Michael Jones, Diplom-Ingenieur Michael Jones, Professional Engin

In both informal and formal letters, Germans often add a postscript (das P.S.). Just as in an English-language letter, it follows the closing and provides some additional information that was not included in the body of the letter.

E-mail

Using e-mail for communication is just as important in Europe and the rest of the world as it isin North America. In German, e-mail is called die E-Mail or die elektronische Post. Let’s look at the vocabulary used to identify the parts of an e-mail:

an	to
anhängen	to attach
Ansicht	view
bearbeiten	to revise
Betreff	subject
Cc	copy
Datei	data file
einfügen	to insert
Entwurf	draft
Größe	size
Hilfe	help
MIME-Typ	MIME type
Name	name
PGP Unterschreiben	secure sign-in
PGP Verschlüsseln	encode for security
senden	to send
später senden	to send later
Unterschrift	signature
von	from
Werkzeug	tools

E-mail addresses and websites have endings that identify the country in which the address

or site is located. If it ends in .de, the country is Germany. If it ends in .at, the country is Austria. And if it ends in .ch, the country is Switzerland:

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