Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
In French/France I use the formal vous when talking to strangers or customers. Here people generally switch pretty quickly to the informal tu when they get to know each other (at my first day at work with my colleagues and boss). But I'm quite an oddball since I use the formal address even for kids, which no one does. Also my neighbor was a bit annoyed at me for continuing to say vous to her after having met her one month ago. It can make people feel old.
Vousvouy-ing kids makes me feel whimsical, like Mary Poppins, so of course I do it too at times. ๐
I always refer to someone by "vous" until I ask permission to "tutoyer", unless they start referring to me with "tu". It's tricky to figure out when is the right moment to switch unless someone decides to switch for you. I much prefer English because of this.
Living in Quebec this is my own private little social anxiety nightmare when meeting new people. You want to talk about pronouns? This is the real pronouns issue. Do I go with tu and seem overly familiar? Do I go with vous and seem standoffish? Does it depend on age? Degrees of separation? Station in life? Nnnnnnnnnngggggghhhh
Couldn't you just suggest "On se tutoie?"?
How about in a uni class? My teacher uses 'vous' and 'du'. That's what prompted the question!
Maybe your teacher uses vous not as a formal address to one student but rather to speak to the whole class? Or he/she respects some students more than others and uses vous to talk to them, in spite of the age difference.
The former is what I used to think, but I've been noticing she does it in one-on-one conversation as well, and as far as I can tell, that's the case for everyone. Also, in written assignments, in the beginning, it would be, for example, 'schreibe [...]' and is now 'escrivez [...]'
It's also a uni class, so not all students are younger than the teacher.
I speak French and German on a daily basis and German speaking people tend to use the du (or sometimes Du) more often than French speaking people. For both languages though, people tend to go more often with the informal forms in the rural areas and more with the formal form in the cities. This is for Switzerland and people in Germany or France may have slightly different habits.