frulein

In German, Frulein (literally, "little woman") was used as a title for young girls and unmarried women as opposed to Frau for married women. It could be used with the first name or last name (Frulein Anna or Frulein Schmidt). Frulein was also used to address waitresses, independent of age or marital status. The expression has gone out of fashion and is now widely considered derogatory. However, it is still used by elderly or strongly conservative speakers, and some elderly unmarried women would even consider it inappropriate to be addressed as "Frau". Otherwise, it is nowadays considered polite to address all women as Frau (plus last name). There is no equivalent male form (^*Herrlein/Mnnlein Schmidt), although a good substitute would be junger Mann. Frulein can be translated as Miss in English, Signorina in Italian,Mademoiselle in French or Seorita in Spanish . Literature and film have preserved the old usage very well, in some cases already in the title. Examples are E.T.A. Hoffmann's tale Das Frulein von Scuderi (1819), Elizabeth von Arnim's epistolary novel Frulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther (1907), and the comedy film Frulein vom Amt (1954), whose title was a common phrase denoting a female operator at a telephone exchange (Amt "office" because in the old days the telephone service was run by the post office). In an earlier comedy film, Unser Frulein Doktor (1940), Jenny Jugo plays Dr. Elisabeth Hansen, a young attractive teacher at a gymnasium who has to fight to be taken seriously as an intellectual. "Frulein" is also the title of a 1960s song sung in German by Chris Howland http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~fenja/texte/fraeulein.html.

Frulein

See also