Addressing Your Father As 'Tu' Or 'Toi'...

As any Francophone knows, you French speakers don't address everyone the same way, in the second person. Your friends, you may address "tu" and "toi". But people who we our respect, are correctly addressed "vous" and "vos". Addressing someone in the familiar this way is called Tutoyer. Interesting word too. It's derived from the French Tu and Toi. And yet it is an English word. Hmmm.

Anyways, I was first exposed to the this idea, tutoyer it's called as I said, when I took two semesters of French in high school. Our French teacher, Mlle. Rheault, who might have been from Quebec, BTW, told us something interesting. She said she certainly would never address her father as tu or toi.

Is that true? Do you Francophones address your fathers always as the more respectful "vous" or "vos". Because even at the time, I would think you'd have more of a close personal relationship with him. Or was that just her who did that?

Thank you for you help.

 

The romance languages as well as others have the polite and familiar forms of pronouns and verbs. I hate it myself. I pretty much learned in high school to use the formal terms mostly.

When I try that in Mexico or Spain they say nobody talks like that.... Oh well so much for high school Spanish. We didn't do much conversational learning in the old days.

Remember Berlitz courses?

 

In aristocratic or traditional families, it can happen to "vouvoyer" his father. But in our time, people who were brought up that way now regret it. But before 1960, everyone "vouvoyait" fathers and mothers. At least in public

 

I can’t speak for before 1960; but yes, you would use the informal [tu] with your parents; but aristocratic or very wealthy families still use vous with their parents. With your in-laws it depends on your relationship. I personally use tu with them but many others use vous.