Tu et Vous

Пустое вы сердечным ты
Она, обмолвясь, заменила,
И все счастливые мечты
В душе влюблённой возбудила.
Пред ней задумчиво стою,
Свести очей с неё нет силы;
И говорю ей: как вы милы!
И мыслю: как тебя люблю.

Александр Сергеевич Пушкин



She substituted, by a chance,
For empty you -- the gentle thou;
And all my happy dreams, at once,
In loving heart again resound.
In bliss and silence do I stay,
Unable to maintain my role:
"Oh, how sweet you are!" I say --
"How I love thee!" says my soul.

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
(I don't know who did the translation, though. Not me!)

First of all, I hope you all appreciate the effort it took to type this poem in the original Russian. I always wrote my assignments by hand in college, so I never learned how to touch type on the Russian keyboard. And although, 8 (!) years ago, I spent a summer in Russia, I believe my computer use there consisted solely of writing e-mails to friends and family in English, so all I learned was how to change the computer's keyboard from Russian to US. (I'm trying to remember, now, how often Samantha and I would go to the internet café. Was it every day? A few times a week? Less often? Even having internet access just once a day for two months straight seems almost unmanageable to me now!)

Now that you've taken the time to properly honour my labourious hunting and pecking (and perhaps also the genius of Pushkin), I'll move on to why this is relevant. Of course, French, like Russian - and so many other languages - has both a formal and an informal word for 'you.' I imagine that for anglophones in general, this aspect of the language is difficult to get used to. At least for me - after years of speaking French - it still is. On the one hand, there are lots of situations where I'm not sure which one to use. And in many of these, there isn't a single right answer. The appropriate form will depend on things like where in France you are, and whether you're speaking to a native French person or not. (Actually "the appropriate form" is not the right term in the last sentence. What I really mean is something like "the form that your interlocuter will find most socially acceptable" or "most pleasing" or "least offensive," or something like that.)

For example, if you meet someone at a party, you should probably tutoyer them (that is, use the informal 'tu'). If you're at a networking soirée, you should probably be a little more formal. (Fortunately, I haven't had to attend any such event here.) What about the other women (and the occasional man) in my pilates classes? Many of them are around my age, but we're strangers, and we're not being introduced by mutual friends (as we might be at a party). (I usually just stick to 'bonsoir' and 'bonne soirée,' which require no formality distinctions.) Or the others among the horde of late-twenty and thirty-somethings descending on any scrap of free space put up for rent in Paris? (Once you realise you might need to arrive quite early to even have a chance of seeing the apartment, you can spend a lot of time standing idly around with others in the same position.)

I believe the general wisdom in such situations is to start with 'vous,' and very soon after, ask "je peux dire 'tu'?" (Can I call you 'tu'?) I've never actually done that. It seems like a slightly awkward question to me, but I suppose that's because it's something I haven't had to do in my many years of meeting people in English. (Although conversation in my mother tongue hasn't left me with a shortage of awkward moments.)

When I first got back to Paris last fall, while in conversation with one of my former professors (from my year as a masters student) during the post-seminar tea, I used 'vous' and he immediately told me to use 'tu.' He said this was the norm for professors and doctoral students. However, I've noticed that some professors have stuck with 'vous,' so I do likewise. But at a certain point, I wonder, "are they just using 'vous' because I am? Am I creating an unnecessary distance?" And then there are people like the agent who is the go-between for me and my landlord. She seems very friendly and informal when we speak in person, except that she always shakes my hand when I leave. The day I moved into my apartment, I witnessed a very friendly call between her and the former tenant ('tu' and all). However, she seems to use 'vous' with me, so I do as well. For a while, I wasn't sure whether to call her by her first name or her last name. The latter seemed overly formal, but given that we were using 'vous,' I still worried about the former. (Usually, I avoided this by beginning my e-mails with just 'bonjour,' as she did.) However, this problem certainly isn't unique to French - I went for at least the first year and a half of grad school not knowing what to call my prospective adviser, because he never signed his e-mails at all.

That was all a very long "one the one hand." On the other hand, there are moments where I know perfectly well which form to use but, by a slip of our tongue (much like the object of affection of our narrator, above), use the wrong one. If I realise right away, this is easily corrected, and I think people are more likely to be amused or understanding than offended or hurt. But what if I don't realise? What if I'm not paying any attention to what I'm saying, and I use the wrong one?

At this point, I think I am actually more worried about accidentally using 'vous' than about accidentally using 'tu.' In part, that's due to the fact that I'm more likely to err on the side of formality than informality. In part, it's because I think people who know I should be using 'vous' will get over being offended and realise that this is a natural mistake to make, while people who might have expected 'tu' will think I'm being distant and don't really want to have anything to do with them. Twice in the past week or so, I used 'vous' when I should have used 'tu', but in both cases immediately corrected myself, which incited a little laugh. No harm done, I don't think. But I want so much to be at ease with this language, and I wish these things would come a little more naturally (especially by now).