Krdytkyu

A friend will sometimes reply to my texts in German. His reply recently to a question was “Jawohl, Frau Hauptfrau.” The use of Frau Hauptfrau appears redundant. When I use lower case on Frau and Hauptfrau the sentence takes on a whole different translation.

The word "Hauptfrau" can have different meanings.

Normally when I hear the word "Hauptfrau" I would translate it as "first wife" or "head wife". In some cultures (germany not included), a man can have multiple wives, with the "Hauptfrau" being the first or most important wife.

In this context, however, I would interpret it as the female form of "Hauptmann", which translates to "captain" in a military sense.

So as "Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann." translates to "Yes, captain." or "Yes, sir." i would say that "Jawohl, Frau Hauptfrau." translates to "Yes, captain." or "Yes, m'am."

I do think it sounds a bit funny because of the word "Frau" appearing twice, but it is still correct.

Edit:

A quick google search reveals that there is no official female form of "Hauptmann":

https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Keine-Hauptfrau-als-Kompaniechefin-article139755.html

Im täglichen Sprachgebrauch wird lediglich der übliche Dienstgrad mit der weiblichen Anrede versehen. So wird die "Frau Hauptmann" ebenso normal sein wie die "Frau Bootsmann", die es bei den Sanitäterinnen schon seit 25 Jahren gibt.

So a woman would be called "Frau Hauptmann" if she was the captain of a company.

Anyway, I still think that your friend wanted to call you "captain" and tried to be politically correct by using what he thought was the female form of the word.

I believe this to be a variant of the somewhat more common ‘Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann!’ It is a phrase associated with accepting the order of your superior in the military. (As I have never been in the military, I cannot tell you how high up a Hauptmann is and whether it would be considered the correct reply or not. I do note that for non-soldiers it is immediately recognisable as such.)

In this male form, Herr is the same title that would be added before one’s name in sufficiently formal contexts: Herr Müller, Herr Schneider. Using Herr together with a function is possible (sometimes preferable) if one doesn’t know the person’s surname or if there is precedence in protocol: Herr Schaffner, Herr Bundeskanzler, Herr Präsident. For women, this Herr becomes Frau in all contexts: Frau Müller, Frau Schaffnerin, Frau Bundeskanzlerin.

Hauptmann is one of the German job descriptions ending in -mann which corresponds to the English ending -man. Another example is Kaufmann, in English this compares e.g. to policeman, congressman. Where the person performing this job is not male but female, it is common to replace the final -mann with -frau in German as you would replace -man with -woman in English: Kaufmann becomes Kauffrau and congressman becomes congresswoman. (As the other answer notes, military grades may follow different rules.)

In the combination of both, we have the title (which happens to be Frau) and the job (which happens to end in Frau) and we put the two together to give:

Frau Hauptfrau

It does seem a little comical even to German speakers but it is undoubtedly grammatically correct.

No. It's not redundant:

• Frau is a form of address: like madam or mister, in this case the standard German female for of address.




• Hauptfrau is a form of title: probably a word play on function, either alluding to (mock/pseudo) polygamous relationship, or derived from an anlogon to Hauptmann, (with a pseudo feminist or mock-progressive undertone) although that specific word is currently not really en vogue for that scenario. It doesn't need to be a miliztary context, but is in the case of OP indicating something like "this female is authorised to give orders".

The corresponding Herr Hauptmann is equally not redundant, despite Herr and -mann also both indicating male.