Personal Pronouns

Du is the informal you for one person: friends, family, children, classmates and pets. Sie is the formal you for strangers, teachers, bosses, officials and anyone in a shop, bank or office, and it is always written with a capital S. When you are unsure, start with Sie — the other person will offer du if they want it.

The three words are genuinely identical in writing apart from capitalisation, so you tell them apart by the verb and the context. Sie ist nett means she is nice (singular verb ist), Sie sind nett with a small s means they are nice, and capitalised Sie sind nett means you are nice, formal. Capital Sie only appears mid-sentence for the formal you.

Use ihr when you address two or more people informally — a group of friends, your family, a class of children. Du is strictly one person. So you say Wie heißt du? to one friend but Wie heißt ihr? to several. English uses you for both, which is why English speakers often forget the plural form entirely.

Yes, because the pronoun follows the grammatical gender of the noun rather than whether the thing is alive. Der Tisch is masculine, so you refer back to it with er: Der Tisch ist neu. Er ist groß. Die Lampe becomes sie and das Buch becomes es. Using es for every object is one of the most common beginner mistakes.

It can be, especially with older people, officials or in professional settings, where du sounds over-familiar. The safe default with adults you do not know is Sie. Younger people, students and informal workplaces often switch to du quickly, and Germans mark the change explicitly by saying Du kannst du sagen, so wait for that invitation.