We didn't raise pigs together

Paris

The subtleties of the French language are often too much for me. For instance, I still often mix up tu and vous and call a good friend vous (I never make the opposite mistake because it was drilled into me in school that you always use vous. This is completely wrong for modern France).

I was having lunch with a friend who runs a small shop and just hired someone to work with her. "I have just one month to figure out if she is good," she said. "After that I am stuck with her forever even if she is terrible."

"Well, you must know right away if she is nice, at least," I said.

"She calls me Madame and vous," said my friend. "It makes me feel so old, and it rots the atmosphere (ça pourrit l'ambiance). I think today I'm going to tell her she has to call me Anne."

"In the States it's the opposite," I said. "People call you by your first name wherever you go. At the doctor's office, they say, 'Sedulia! The doctor will see you!' The cashier at the supermarket says, 'Thank you, Sedulia!'"

"Oh, I couldn't bear that," said Anne.

"We have an expression for when someone is too familiar," said Caroline. "We say, "On n'a pas élévé les cochons ensemble!"

Comments

[mmh]

In Virginia, I am mostly called Mrs. H. Not M. Where I grew up in South Georgia, it is proper to call someone Mrs. M. That is add a Mrs. or Miss to their first name. We never, ever called an older person by their first name only.

[Allison]

It's simultaneously comforting and depressing that someone who lived for so long in France still has trouble with tu and vous. Depressing b/c it only reminds me that I will most likely never get the hang of it, it being such a foreign concept... Comforting, though, b/c it makes me feel like less of a fool that after all these years of study, and after even having lived in France for a short stint, it can still be tricky for me.

It was actually a bit of a problem in my homestay family in Provence! I really stressed out about what to call my homestay parents, and attempted to solve the problem by simply speaking to them at the same time so that I could use vous without worrying! I didn't often have that option, however, because one of them bartended nights and the three of us only ate all together twice a week. I decided to refer to them each as vous, because I was taught that when speaking to a person considerably older than you are, you should always use vous, or it's incredibly disrespectful and insulting (of course, I that was also ten years ago, and it didn't occur to me that the situation might be different for young teenagers and twenty-something adults). Given that these people were 30 some-odd years older, I used vous to avoid being rude and disrespectful. Well, one day at dinner, one of them told me that not only could I tutoie them, but that I *should* have been doing so pretty much all along, b/c my use of "vous" was cold/distant/rude/as though I were trying to erect a "barrier" between us... Whoops!

I also find the false familiarity of the American commercial/business world grating - especially since it usually comes from people like collection agencies, telemarketers, campaign contribution calls, etc. - essentially, people who are just trying to take my money... The pretending-to-be-my-best-friend bit is certainly... aggravating to say the least.

And that's an interesting/amusing expression, must be very old... Who knew raising pigs together was so intimate? :)

[maitresse]

trop marrant... I'm going to remember that one.

One thing that really bothers me is that my boyfriend's mother vousvoyers me. Of course I vousvoyer her right back. But his aunts-- her sisters-- all said "on se tutoie!" the second time I met them. So, because we tutoyer each other, I feel like I have this lovely close relationship with his aunts, but I feel distant from his mother. And this woman is likely going to be my mother-in-law in the not-so-distant future! And N tutoyers his mother, but insists that I have to vousvoyer her and she has to vousvoyer me, it's only proper.

Is this normal??

[Sedulia]

Can't help you there! Though as I have seen, plenty of French people have their own troubles with "tu" and "vous." I think it cause far more grief than it's worth (like Mother's Day!) and I'm so glad we don't have to deal with it in our own sensible language.