Appropriate pronoun for “you” and “someone else who’s not here right now.”

Question

What would be the appropriate pronoun to use when addressing someone (say, one person who you’d normally address with du), but also including someone else who is not present at the moment?

A contrived example: There’s a party tonight. I'm talking to my friend Alice, and I want to ask her if she and our other mutual friend Bob are going to the party. Bob is not present in the conversation. How would I ask her this? Specifically, what pronoun do I use talk about her and Bob simultaneously, even though Bob isn’t there?

• Choice 1 (2nd person singular, du form):

  Gehst du und Bob zur Party?

• Choice 2: (3rd person singular, er/sie/es form)

  Geht du und Bob zur Party?

• Choice 3: (2nd person plural, ihr form)

  Geht du und Bob zur Party?

• Choice 4: (3rd person plural, sie form)

  Gehen du und Bob zur Party?

I feel like none of these fully make sense. Choices 1 and 2 seem wrong because the subject of the sentence is two people, even though you’re only talking to one of them. Choice 3 feels wrong because ihr implies I’m talking to more than one person, but only Alice is here. Choice 4 feels wrong because now I’m talking completely in the 3rd person while addressing one of the people in question.

There’s probably some non-standard way to handle this, but I’m not sure what would sound colloquially appropriate.

Answer 1

Gehen du und Bob zur Party?

Is the right answer here. If they were both standing right in front of you you say

Geht ihr zur Party?

But one of the people is not there, so you are talking about a 3rd, non-present party (the set/union of both Bob and Alice).

If you feel awkward with the first choice, you can circumvent this by introducing Bob as subject beforehand.

"Was ist mit Bob? Geht ihr beide zur Party?"
or "Weißt du, ob Bob auch kommt? Geht ihr beide zur Party?"

If it is clear from context who the 3rd party is, you can omit the 3rd party and directly use the 3rd person plural. Just yesterday, a friend of mine told me about an event, and I asked

Geht ihr zu der Veranstaltung?

From context it was clear that this wasn't the 3rd person majestic singular, but that with "ihr" both him and his girlfriend (which wasn't present at that time) were meant.

Answer 2

I don't really think this works in German as planned. Workarounds would be to mentioned Bob beforehand (A), clarify along the way (B) or rephrase it entirely (C).

(A) Was ist mit Bob? Geht ihr beide zur Party?
(B) Geht ihr, also du und Bob, zur Party?
(C) Gehst du mit Bob zur Party?

Answer 3

There is an article in the culture part of the magazine "Der Spiegel" about this topic:

If the article of "Der Spiegel" is correct, the official rule is:

"du" + "er" => 2nd person plural

According to this rule, the correct sentence is:

Geht du und Bob zur Party?

However, the article in "Der Spiegel" also states:

Sätze wie diese klingen ungewohnt, wenn nicht gar falsch. Sie sind aber korrekt.

Or in other words: Although these sentences are correct according to official grammar rules, nearly any native speaker would say that such sentences are incorrect.

A native speaker would nearly always avoid this situation by using the pronoun belonging to the person of the verb. In this case the verb is 2nd person plural, so you would use the pronoun "ihr".

The resulting sentence could be:

Du und Bob, geht ihr zur Party?

Answer 4

This is one of the cases where grammar trumps feelings. If you’re talking to Alice and you want to know whether her and Bob are going to the party then the appropriate grammatical person if both Alice and Bob are mentioned explicitly is the 3rd person plural.

Gehen du und Bob zur Party?

Du of course draws a lot of people to want to use a second person singular. But that is only acceptable if there is only one person; however there is also Bob. The same is true for a verb form in third person singular: as there is Alice, singular is not acceptable.

The second person plural is permissable in such a construction if the group has already been established as a group beforehand or is obviously established as a group a priori. So if Alice is married to Charlie, I can ask Alice:

Geht ihr zur Party?

This sentence would implicitly include Charlie if no other context has been given. If you want to include Alice and Bob into the ihr, it requires some form of pre-existing context to make it clear that Alice and Bob are intended to be included in ihr. For example, Alice might have told you that Bob called her about the party and then your next question might be ‘Geht ihr zur Party?’ Alternatively, if Bob is already there and the three of you are talking you can use ihr while obviously addressing both of them – however, this is a different situation as you mention that Bob is not present in your conversation.

When a pronoun and a proper noun are put together to form a combined group, this will automatically make a case for a third person plural form unless a first person plural is acceptable. Funnily enough, that still works when Bob is not mentioned by name but by pronoun only:

Gehen er und du zur Party?

Answer 5

Ich bin Ausländer und spreche nicht gut Deutsch. Aber

Du und Bob, geht ihr zur Party?

schmeckt meinen Ohren gut.