Tu or Vous?

Oui, tu as raison! :wink:

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I can only tell you that when the 3 English speaking aides that used to visit Fran, lapsed into French when speaking with me in the presence of a non English speaking aide out of politeness, we all 4 of us used tu without even thinking about it. A fact that one French aide queried that I as ‘the client’ or even ‘the older person’ might be offended.

How we laughed at their quaint ways. :rofl:

I’d probably vous-voie Stella as I think she’s the matriarch, the rest of you not a chance😁

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:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: I’d be tu-ing everyone of you… just as I do all the school kids and toddlers :+1: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Sneaky thinking! I like it.

@Stella Oh yes, it was deliberate. What was said to me was so insulting I just switched straight away to vous. It is rare I would do that but it does make people back off if you can use their own language in a way that they would if they had to. Not had any problem since with that person and they are now incredibly polite and we all get on.

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On the related subject mentioned here of noun gender, the one question no French person (or any other language afflicted person) can answer is WHY? Why on earth would you want to apply gender to inanimate objects. The best I ever get is a shrug and a ‘because it is’. :rofl:

But someone in the dim and distant, knowing that our English language is derived from German and French, amongst others, must have taken a conscious decision to anwer the ‘why?’ with a ‘lets get rid of it then’. :joy:

Yup. That’s just how it is. At least there are only two so you don’t get the incongruity of
‘where is the turnip? She is on the kitchen table’
‘where is the young lady? It is at the opera’
(As Mark Twain put it in the awful German language :joy::grin:)

And you have the fun of: same word, different gender,different meaning too :rofl:

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Dead right, it is such fun isn’t it? :rofl: :joy:

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Your post made me think about applications of ‘he’ and ‘she’ in English - ships are an obvious one and I can think of similar examples of feminising objects, but struggled to find male equivalents. OTOH people often seem to assume treat an unfamiliar dog as masculine.

Greek has three genders - male, female and neuter. Even more to remember.
Of course adjectives, pronouns, and articles must agree with their corresponding noun’s grammatical gender.

When I was a schoolboy, I was taught that English had four genders - masculine, feminine, common and neuter. I assume that is still the case - unless it has gone ‘woke’ and now has 57 varieties . . . . or was that just Heinz?

I have just watched a romantic French film about Mme. Jeanne du Barry and her true love affair with Louis the 15th. As she was saying her last goodbyes to him shortly before his death she whispered to him ‘je t’aime’. He smiled and replied ‘Enfin, le tutoiement’, and replied to her the same way. I had not noticed until this point that, presumably because of their differing classes and origins, they must have been using ‘vousvoiement’ throughout the years of their affair. A very lump in throat moment. :smiley:

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I imagine that tutoie-ing the King of France wasn’t something you did without invitation, if you wanted to keep your head. :smiley:

It was the other way round, wasn’t it? Not with this king of course, the next one. :thinking: