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French has a T-V distinction in the second person singular. That is, it uses two different sets of pronouns: tu and vous and their various forms. The usage of tu and vous depends on the kind of relationship (formal or informal) that exists between the speaker and the person with whom they are speaking and the age differences between these subjects. [1]
French has a complex system of personal pronouns (analogous to English I, we, they, and so on). When compared to English, the particularities of French personal pronouns include: a T-V distinction in the second person singular (familiar tu vs. polite vous) the placement of object pronouns before the verb: « Agnès les voit. » ("Agnès sees ...
In Old French texts, the pronouns tu and vous are often used interchangeably to address an individual, sometimes in the same sentence. However, some emerging pattern of use has been detected by recent scholars. [21] Between characters equal in age or rank, vous was more common than tu as a singular address.
This is because tu, in this use-case, is a contraction of the antiquated t-il particle originating from 13th century France, [10] which was used to indicate a question. [11] For example, in metropolitan french, a question may be asked as simply "Veut-il manger?" whereas in Joual, it may be asked as "Il veux-tu manger?"
Ils sont plus nombreux que tu ne le crois. — "There are more of them than you think." Expletive ne is found in finite subordinate clauses (never before an infinitive). It is characteristic of literary rather than colloquial style. [4] In other registers French tends to not use any negation at all in such clauses, e.g., J'ai peur que cela se ...
"Tu" is actually more likely to come from the 3rd person pronoun il with a euphonic -t-, as using a particle ti in exactly the same way is a feature found in the Oïl languages (other than French) in France and Belgium. Still, its use is often seen as a redundancy in a question for those who defend a standardized French.
Old Dutch did not appear to have a T–V distinction. Thu was used as the second-person singular, and gi as the second-person plural. In early Middle Dutch, influenced by Old French usage, the original plural pronoun gi (or ji in the north) came to be used as a respectful singular pronoun, creating a T–V distinction.
French speakers of Quebec use the informal second-person pronoun tu more often and in more contexts than speakers in France do. In certain contexts it may be perfectly appropriate to address a stranger or even the customer of a store using tu , whereas the latter would be considered impolite in France.