Le Tu et le Vous L'Art Francais de compliquer les Choses by Etienne Kern

 Le Tu et le Vous

L'Art Francais de compliquer les Choses by Etienne Kern has been recently published by J'Ai Lu in pocket version. I asked for a review copy, because the thematic is intriguing. My grandfather and Grandmother used the vous when they chatted together and my mother  still perplexed considering the intimacy that there is between a husband and a wife:  a cousin and another person tends to use the vous when they speak with my mother: once my brother giving the tu at a customer interested in buying certain tiles in his store, started with that man a long and interesting discussion on the tu and the lei: that man would have preferred the lei, largely used in Italy when there is a bit of formality, but my brother replied he loved to use the tu to everyone. The other one said he wasn't capable to do that  immediately. My brother ended the discussion telling him he loved to give the tu to everyone. Known and unknown people.

Apart these familiar anecdocts, the vous, is a story pretty french. Vous is largely used much more in France than not in Italy and when you dialogue in english with a french, you can be more "relaxed"in english because Britons and Americans are less informal. 

Their formality consists in the last name pronounced before to start an interaction more informal, passing at the name. "Call me John" is the signal that the person thinks that the last name, so the formality, can be bypassed.

When I studied french I remember that the problem of the tu and vous was big.

What should we do when we interact with a contemporary, or someone more old than us, or more important? Etienne remarks as his parents told him that for old people the vous was necessary. But the vous can be also an "habit" and an elegant touch added in the conversation between two people of the same age. Once, told us our french teacher, there was this lady close friend with a french lady. After many years of friendship one day the italian asked her that maybe it would  have been pleasant to pass at the tu. The french lady cut the story replying: Si Vous Voulet...

Etienne in this book describes historically and of course passing through a lot of known literary cases, Hugo, Proust, Flaubert, but also historical facts, citing Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, recent or current politicians like the wife of Macron, a phaenomenon that it is intrinsecally eradicated and profound in the customs of french people, but also thanks to the modernity the appearance of the tu much more used from certain centuries at this part.

Although it is true that in modern times people tend to use more the informal Tu instead than the Vous, I guess that the Vous won't never disappear from the French culture, I agree with Kern.

A pleasant readings, a literary, political, historical little book, plenty of examples taken in the most diversified fields on the Vous and Tu.

Anna Maria Polidori