American Civil War: How 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' Can Teach You Something About the Civil War

My all-time-favorite movie, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, is settled in the time of the American Civil War. However, the war itself is not the center of attention in the storyline. But the protagonists take advantage of certain situations relating to the war by pretending to belong to one party. The first time they do that is when they put on uniforms of dead soldiers to get treated in a nearby military sanatorium after having suffered wounds during another story. After their recovery, they head to a cemetery in which a treasure is supposed to be buried. However, on their way, they come across other soldiers:

Until this scene, I hadn't realized that each side of the Civil War had different colored uniforms and what these colors meant. So for the rest of the movie, there were only the "blue ones" and the "grey ones" for me. I looked them up: the two sides are the Confederate soldiers and the Union soldiers, as we know from the chapter War of Northern Aggression. If I understood it correctly (it seems there were various uniforms in various colors), the Confederate soldiers are those in the gray uniforms, thus soldiers of the Confederate States from the South. The Union soldiers are those in the blue uniforms from the North, who are taking Tuco and Blondie as prisoners of war.

In this movie, before having been taken prisoner, Tuco (the one with the fake eye-patch) says three things that should prove the soldiers that he is a true Confederate soldier. The first is "To hell with General Grant!" that refers to the most successful Union general Ulysses S. Grant. He continues, with a bit of help from Blondie, "Hurrah for General Lee!" that refers to Commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virgina Robert E. Lee. The third claim to make the approaching soldiers believe that he is a Confederate soldier, is the sentence "God is with us because he hates the Yanks too!" -- Yanks (the singular form is Yankee) is, according to Wikipedia, an informal term for the Union soldiers or Northern Americans in general. So basically, Tuco did everything right, except that his audience was the wrong one.

As you can see, there is not only superb storytelling and tough gunslinger-action, but also historical accurateness in "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". But I had expected nothing less from director Sergio Leone. Did I already mention that this is my all-time-favorite movie? If not, now I have.

Register: "Hallo, Du!" or "Grüßgott, Sie!"

Marianne wrote an interesting post about the usage of "Du" and "Sie" (the formal and informal "you") in the German language, in which she is wondering why people in Austria are more and more skipping the "Sie" when talking to strangers. This made me think: do we Austrians actually know why and when we do that?

Personally, I often struggle with the question whether I should address a stranger with "Du" or "Sie". If people are younger than me, my age or only slightly above it, I address them with a simple "Du". However, at work -- I work at a very popular fashion store on Saturdays -- I try to avoid addressing customers directly at all because I am not sure about which "you" to choose. Normally, I go with a "Du" for young people and people up to about 40 years who seem open-minded and friendly by their appearance and/or behavior. However, people in suits and grumpy people get a "Sie" instantly. There are mixed versions too though which often leads to me switching between both "Du" and "Sie" during the whole conversation, which is sometimes quite awkward. It might be really superficial, but to me it seems that it works most of the time.

Another choice between word that goes with that is also the difference between "Hallo" and the Austrian "Grüßgott". At work, this often seems to be the bigger issue because you can sometimes avoid addressing customers directly and thus also the Du-Sie-question. But greeting in retail and customer service is crucial to leave a good impression, especially at the cash register. Sometimes people feel offended when they get greeted with a simple "Hallo". I even experienced a young girl a bit younger than my age insisting on me saying "Grüßgott" to her instead of "Hallo", which I found quite ridiculous because, to me it seems that "Hallo" is a rather neutral greeting and not really offending.

Maybe it is just me and in truth there is a clear rule for when to use "Sie" and "Grüßgott" and "du" and "Hallo". At work, however, I will still stick to  my superficial analysis of people's appearances. And when it comes to greeting, I simply say "Hallo-Grüßgott" to almost every customer. As for my greeting system outside work, I can't really tell. I guess it is mostly a "Hallo", except, of course, for far older and/or respectable people. That's probably how most of young Austrians handle the politeness-versus-friendliness-situation. We all might not really sure about when to use what.

What is your approach on that?