To tu or not to tu

Vous better watch your language

May I use the familiar tu form with you people? . . . I feel already I’ve established enough of a rapport with you people to jump into the tu form. . . You know Caesar used the tu form with Brutus even after Brutus stabbed him. He said, “Et tu, Brute,” and I think that’s a little too informal when someone’s trying to assassinate you.

–Larry David

I don’t want to make the same mistake as Julius Caesar.

In French, the tu form is the informal version of the English personal pronoun, you. It is used with family, friends, children, animals and – oddly enough – God. The formal (also plural) version, vous, is how one addresses strangers, elders, or those with whom there is a distant or formal relationship. It may be considered disrespectful, for example, to use tu with your doctor, and odd to use vous when talking to your dog.

Seems simple enough. Nope. It’s a minefield.

There is a whole little dance required to transition a relationship from vous to tu. The French know this tango well. The language even has verbs to describe which pronoun people are using. You either vouvoyer someone or tutoyer them.

The intricacies of the vous-to-tu dance are a mystery to me. I’ve had French acquaintances who have made a somewhat ceremonial effort to ask if I am comfortable transitioning to the familiar form with each other. (On se tutoie ?) I’ve also had quite a few younger people forgo all of that and just immediately jump right in with tu. Either way, I’m mostly flattered that a real-life French person would consider me worthy enough to do the tu. And here I thought I was having trouble making friends.

I’m flattered, but also perplexed. While I take it as a compliment to be tu-ed, I wonder when it would be insulting for me to use that informal tone with someone else? How do I know when to ask for the switch? Is there a secret signal? And why are there some French people I’ve known for years and consider to be friends who still use vous with me? Should I have asked them long ago to switch? Is it now too late, like when you forget someone's name but have talked to them so often that you have to pretend until one of you dies? And, what if I or – worse – someone I ask to switch doesn’t want to get that familiar? How do I handle a tu refusal? How do I give one politely?

It’s almost as fraught as the debate over what time of day to switch from bonjour to bonsoir.

Caesar probably didn’t have time to overthink it, but I do. If I am on the tu level with a French friend and then I meet her husband, does he inherit her tu, or do I have to vouvoyer him? If I am unsure about which pronoun to use, can I maintain a passive sentence structure long enough to see what pronoun they use for me? And, if someone automatically addresses me as tu and I still use vous, does that make me a snotty bitch?

You might think that tutoyer-ing someone is where I always want to end up. You might believe the friendlier tone leads to the easiest, most chill discussions. You would be wrong. What comes with the tu form are its possessive singular adjectives. Now you have to be certain of the gender of every noun you reference, or you’re sunk. If you want to ask your close friend where her cell phone is, you have to know whether the so-called immortals of the Academie Française – the arbiters of the French language – had decided whether “cell phone” is a masculine or feminine noun. This means you have to choose whether to ask, Où est ton téléphone portable? or ta téléphone portable. (It’s ton.) If you were still being formal, you wouldn’t have to sweat it because the possessive singular adjective for vous is always votre. Votre téléphone portable. Easy!

The lesson here: If I can just keep all your French relationships at arm’s length, it’ll be way easier to hide any gaps in my knowledge of French noun genders. It has me rethinking my New Year’s commitment to make more French friends.