TU AND VOUS—STATUS PROBLEMS

TU AND VOUS—STATUS PROBLEMS. The existence of tu and vous in French meant that every encounter between two people presented issues, which seem to be becoming less difficult. Two people encounter each other. Should they acknowledge that one outranks the other? This may have often been an easy question when there was a formal hierarchy. The French Revolution with its ideal of equality obviously complicated things. A separate issue arose between friendly acquaintances—when were they close enough to use tu? I was reading a Simenon mystery from the 1930’s yesterday where it arose between Maigret and a woman he had known from childhood.