Challenges in French

I took French in junior high, high school, and college, so by the time I was 19, I spoke the language fairly fluently for a school-taught speaker. Except for the subjunctive tense--or was it the plus-ce-que parfait? It's the one with "Il faut que..." I never quite got that one down and used "J'ai besoin de..." instead. The meanings are close enough, and the latter is a regular verb conjugation, not some bizarre conjugation with no relation to the rest of the language.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Charles Bremner's column in the May 23, 2007 Times Online (UK) caught my eye. It looked into the latest cultural difficulties with the French language, now that Sarkozy is President of France.

Here is one of those stories that are difficult to convey to people who speak only English. President Sarkozy's government has annoyed the "progressive" sections of the teaching establishment with an order that school pupils must address their teachers with the formal vous rather than the familiar second person singular tu. Teachers are advised to use the respectful vous to Lycée teenagers in their classes.

The orders are part of Sarko's campaign to reimpose respect and civility across French society. Since the 1960s generation threw off formality, some teachers have let pupils tutoie them and most tutoie their younger pupils. Xavier Darcos, the new Education Minister, said on Tuesday: "It is indispensable that children vouvoient their teachers and preferable that teachers do not use 'tu' with lycée pupils, so that everyone is in their right place."

The fuss illustrates the confusion over the when to tutoie, with its feeling of instant formality, and when to use vous, with its sense of distance and respect. The matter remains a minefield for foreigners and even muddles the French. Asking On se tutoie? (shall we use tu) is often a tricky moment with a new acquaintance.

The closest equivalent we have to this conundrum in America is in the school system, with the question of whether to call the English teacher "Mrs. Johnson," or "Sarah." The same 1960s generation that threw France on the road to the informality of "tu" sent us on the road to informality between children and adults.

There are multiple nuances to the vous / tu question. Vous is for people you don't know well or people who are higher than you on the social or authority ladder. It is formal, distant, polite.

On the other hand, tu is for people you know very well or people who are your equal or lower socially or in business. It is informal, familiar, and when you don't know someone very well, impolite.

I used tu on my kids when they were little and I was too lazy to say excess syllables. Instead of "Be quiet," I said, "Tais-toi," French for "shut up," which was a bad word in our house in English. And I used, "Pousses-toi," to say, "Get out of my way." Both of these French terms are considered impolite, because they're usually used on strangers.

When the man I practiced French with a couple jobs ago asked me to have dinner with him after work (we had been using tu with each other), I knew what I was doing when I shifted over to vous to ask him if he was married (I already knew he was) and then refuse him.

It's a handy thing, this French distinction between known/unknown, formal/informal. It tells us that Patti LaBelle's "Lady Marmalade" was a woman of ill repute and not her man's true love when she invited him to bed with her (she used "vous"). And it offers Sarkozy a tool he can use in his (this is the cynic in me) most-likely futile attempt to return civility to French culture.

We could use a tool like that in America. Too bad we don't have one....