Puis nous tutoyer?

I first started to learn French, the language of Voltaire and Molière, at the age of 11, I’d never been abroad then and wouldn’t until my first visit to France seven years later. I remember that learning a foreign language, even when taught by Mrs Barlow, seemed somehow exotic and different. (This experience wasn’t repeated later in my school career when I attempted, and twice failed, to learn Latin from Mrs Barlow).

One of the big linguistic differences that French has over English is the usage of formal and informal versions of “you” – vous and tu - the analogous forms in old English would be “thee” and “you” which had certainly never crossed our eleven year-old consciousness. The two forms have an implied seniority and almost a class structure and Mrs Barlow solemnly instructed us on the grave dangers of insulting a Frenchman (or woman) by addressing them as “tu” at an inappropriate time. In the structure of the French language, an eleven year old schoolboy is inferior to almost everyone and so “vous” was always the safe choice for me. Add to this the easier –ez declensions for the vous form, a long period of holidays where I only talked in shops or formal settings, some business use (always in the formal version) and dealing with immobiliers and notaires and my instinctive response in any conversation is to use vous/ -ez.

All well and good until I joined the hockey club, here there wasn’t even an introductory vous on meeting people – it was straight into the tu form and some puzzled looks when I instinctively used vous. So I worked really hard on changing a forty year habit and trying to remember the second person familiar irregular verb declensions.

And then this week I ploughed straight into a conversation with Joelle, a friend of a friend who I’d met twice, using tu only to realise she was using vous to me. I know how to get out of that sort of situation – of course the French language has a way to deal with this – as there are two specific verbs for calling each other tu (tutoyer) or vous (vousvoyer). Hence my correct response should have been “donc, puis nous tutoyer?” – but somehow those forty years of not wanting to give offence were too engrained (what happens if they don’t want to tutoyer …… ) and I said nothing. Next time maybe …..

It’s a minefield this language thing.