Fräulein

In German, ( German pronunciation (help·info): [frɔɪlaɪn]) Fräulein (literally, "little woman" or "little Mrs.", colloquial form Frollein) is used as a title for young girls or unmarried women as opposed to Frau for married women. It is used with the first name or last name (Fräulein Anna or Fräulein Schmidt). The German suffix "-lein" like the German suffix "-chen" is a diminutive.

Because the term means "little woman", it is often considered offensive when applied to adults. Duden claims that the use of Fräulein to refer to an unmarried woman is outdated, and recommends that adult women should always be addressed as Frau unless they have specifically requested otherwise,^[1] and other style guides recommend only using Frau to refer to women, especially in business or other formal settings.^[2][3] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Fräulein can still be used when addressing very young girls.^[4] The title is still in use by some elderly and more conservative German speakers in the traditional sense, however.

Fräulein can be translated as Miss in English; 小姐 in Chinese; Signorina in Italian; Mademoiselle in French; Senhorita in Portuguese; Señorita in Spanish; (Me)juffrouw in Dutch; and Gospođica in Serbo-Croatian.

Usage in culture

Literature and film have depicted the usage very well, in some cases already in the title. Examples are E.T.A. Hoffmann's tale Das Fräulein von Scuderi (1819), Elizabeth von Arnim's epistolary novel Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther (1907), and the comedy film Fräulein vom Amt (1954), whose title was a common phrase denoting a female operator at a telephone exchange. In an earlier comedy film, Unser Fräulein Doktor (1940), Jenny Jugo plays Dr. Elisabeth Hansen, a young attractive teacher at a Gymnasium (German highschool) who has to fight to be taken seriously as an intellectual.

In English-language film, fräulein is sometimes used as a hint that the characters are actually speaking German. An example of this is The Sound of Music.

"Fräulein" is also the title of a 1960s song sung in German by Chris Howland. The song was a German cover from Bobby Helms's 1957 song "Fraulein".

German NDW pop singer Fräulein Menke included the term "Fräulein" into her stage name.

Used in the films Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Toht called Indy's girl Marion "Fräulein". In The Last Crusade, Dr. Jones playfully refers to Dr. Elsa Schneider as "Fräulein" when they first meet in Venice.

The character Klavier Gavin, a prosecutor in the Ace Attorney series of video games, makes frequent use of the term fräulein when addressing or referring to the game's female characters.

In Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, one of Haruka's attempted boyfriends refers to her as "Fräulein" throughout the series.

The legendary German tennis player, Steffi Graf, was given the nickname "Fräulein Forehand" by the press due to her extremely powerful forehand, considered by many as one of the greatest shots in the history of women's tennis.

See also

• Gender-neutral language
• List of German expressions in English

References