New Club Member - Tutoyer or not?

Thank you :clap: Expresses my thoughts exactly but i self-censor so much on here I just kept shtum :joy:

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Not pretentious, maintaining distance. It implies she respects your wife too, and probably finds it easier to correct her. I’m assuming you are all of mature years. She probably as an old person doesn’t feel comfortable tutoieing you, lots of people don’t. You didn’t all look after the goats together.

Edited to add it’s really unusual to switch back to vous after saying ok to Tu, so I imagine she felt railroaded into tutoiement. Some people just don’t like it and will stick to vous forever.

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When I was a conseilleur, the Maire was always addressed as vous during meetings and on official occasions but tu at all other times (we bought our moulin from her too)

I tutoie our mayor, unless it’s a meeting with others and then will use vous to be polite. As then I’m addressing the mayor not my friend jean-jacques.

I have some sympathy for @Rachman although wouldn’t have used the same words, but my view is that it is the French way, however incomprehensible to British ears, and we must conform to that. I have a similar frustrating ongoing experience here.

The aides who come to Fran are from 2 different organisations, one has 4 regulars, 2 English, 1 Scottish and 1 French. Of course with the first 3 there is no problem because we speak English, with the 3rd one she readily agreed that I should use tu to her although she continues to use vous to me. More than that, she laughs when I make a mistake and say vous, and corrects me. :astonished:

The other team are all French and not only use vous to me but call me Monsieur, even though I am expected to use their prenoms. I am gradualy getting them to use Daveed and with a few it is a cause for giggles and laughter but they all take absolutely no notice if I accidentally use tu instead of vous.

By the way, when I am talking to the 3 English speakers in French, because there is a French person there (they often overlap), we always use tu to each other. This means that I am switching back and forth between the 2 of them. However, when the 3 anglophones are talking in French to the French ones present they use tu, even though they may not know them. This is a professional thing similar to the universal tu used by all lorry drivers I have met right from the first meeting.

To say it is a bloody minefield is to well understate the situation and keeps me exhausted whenever they are here. :roll_eyes:

My wife tutoies the local France Service (FS) lady who she knows quite well from volunteering in the same small village building that FS are based in. But when my wife and I went to meet her to discuss some issue (about access to France Connect), the FS lady specifically asked my wife at the outset of the meeting, should she tutoie or vouvoie her for the meeting. My wife said let’s continue to tutoie each other, though the FS lady looked a bit uncomfortable so doing in a professional context.

A variant on the theme…when I worked in a Paris law firm, the day junior staff were promoted to manager, they immediately started vouvoing their PAs, presumably to demonstrate the former were now on different hierarchical level to the PAs… The latter took their revenge by deliberately and publicly tutoieng the same managers.

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Yes, it isn’t simply a matter of language. Although I always conform and advocate conforming, I do think the whole business is contrary to the spirit of the national motto, almost a way of putting people in their place.

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OK, so we’ll both vousvoyer her, on the rambles too, and see how she reacts.

Or you could do the linguistic gymnastics to use neither! My OH is very could at constructing sentences quickly to avoid the problem completely. I’m not.

I use “on” as often as possible for precisely that reason.

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I use ‘on’ because it saves me using the ending for ‘nous’. Not sure how it saves you using ‘tu’ or ‘vous’ though. :thinking:

On s’en va? For example, avoids “tu viens?” or “vous venez?”

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I thought that translated as ‘we’ still, but I bow to your superior knowledge. :smiley:

That is the grammatical definition but in common usage it can encapsulate je, tu and nous!

On peut se parler demain? Or je pourrais vous parler demain? Same thing…

Hmmm not sure that is the same using on and je but i am sure to be corrected

when one is chatting away… things might well be said that don’t exactly meet all “the rules” but everyone understands one another… :wink: :wink:

I’m certainly very remotely distant from being an authority on the French ‘on’, but in English ‘one’ as a synonym for ‘you/we’ would often be ridiculously pompous (think JR Mogg) - yet by contrast, used as’ we’ (but excluding the speaker) it might in many contexts be rather patronising. I like the French ‘on’ and hope it doesn’t have these complexly nuanced connotations.

Well, certainly around here… it’s used freely and with no bad/odd/nasty/whatever connotations whatsoever… :+1: :wink:

I follow the example of my French neighbours and friends, whenever I can… :+1: :+1: :+1:

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I agree. Although i have found ‘on’ taken the wrong way. Damn nuances locally???!!!

(replying to Stella)
Indeed. ‘On’ is standard usage here in 86 but I still find it hard to break free from the ‘grammatically correct’ French I was taught in the UK several decades ago - probably based on text books written in the 1920s: ‘Mais on essaie…’