Abroad or not, client or not, that "Hi [first name] phrase will ALWAYS be considered "rude" when it doesn't come from people somehow considered "close".
With a german friend, I once started to say "du", and his direct reply was: "Ich wollte sogar vorstellen wir dutzen uns". Well, he WAS living in our house for some months and we went out together a lot. It was a very good opportunity to re-discover my own country.
In dutch, the "ranking differences" in adressing people (U, gij/ge, jij/je) are far more relax than in german or french. But christian names ...
In english I cannot hear a difference, but using the christian name of someone I don't know would sound weird. |
