There is perhaps no aspect of the French language that has caused me more stress than the "vous" vs "tu" dilemma.  Other Americans have trouble with the subjunctive, which, for some reason has never bothered me, and still others agonize over French spelling, which, for all it’s seemingly unnecessary vowels, seems much more logical to me than English.  But, for a person who is perhaps overly conscious about saying the right thing, the question of formal or familiar has been a source of constant worry.

During my year in Paris as a student, I did not think much of addressing my host parents with the familiar vous, while they called me tu.  I ate dinner with them almost every night; shared tartines with them every morning after stumbling out of bed and into the kitchen, groggy-eyed and virtually incapable of uttering a word in French; and Monsieur washed my laundry – including my "linge personnel" every week.  Still, none of this was sufficiently intimate to merit my calling them tu.  Besides, I never really felt close enough to either Madame or Monsieur to be so familiar.  But perhaps I should not have been surprised – after having spent an entire year enduring incessant reminders of the perfection of the previous year’s student – that Monsieur did not recognize me when I called in January and he insisted, "Vous devez penser à mon frère, Philippe."  No, I wasn’t mistaking him for his brother, Philippe (in fact, I had never even met the man).  But it did make me smirk to, finally, be addressed in the polite you by Monsieur.

At school, the English teacher Catherine told me right away that all the teachers address one another in the familiar.  Still, some colleagues, with whom we are less acquainted, join us at the lunch table and insist on calling us vous.  And, over the course of a week, one of the librarians engaged in constant switching, sending me into a confused frenzy.  One night, I was invited to dinner at Catherine’s home.  Of course, we address one another with the familiar you, and it was only natural for me to address her fourteen- and ten-year-old daughters as tu.  But the question of her husband remained a conundrum.  I barely knew Laurent, so conventional wisdom would have me using formal address; but it felt rather ridiculous to tell him about my far-flung misadventures as if he were an old friend, while speaking to him as a distant stranger.  Vouvoiement seemed particularly ridiculous after I was escorted home, clutching Laurent around the waist as we flew through the streets of Paris on his motorcycle.  Later that week, Catherine laughed when I pulled her aside and made her privy to my dilemma.  "Of course you should tutoyer him!" she said with a wave of her hand.  "And you mustn’t always wait for others to decide for you."  This deference, I learned, indicated my consideration of my interlocutor as a superior.  It hadn’t occurred to me until then that I, a foreigner, even had the right to decide.

I took this advice to heart when I went to work as a translator at a public relations office, but an early gaffe has kept me nervously playing language games with a managing partner for over a month now.  Not realizing Bénédicte’s authority, I addressed her as tu early on during my employment.  It was only the following week that I noticed that she was on a strictly formal basis with everyone else in the office.  Terribly embarrassed, but having already established a relationship with Béné in which we se tutoyer, I have found no other solution but to avoid addressing her directly.  Which is no easy task, when I have to ask for help and answer questions.

Despite this minor slip-up, I have, nonetheless, become more comfortable recently at taking the decision of whether to vouvoyer or tutoyer.  At the gym, where we all sweat together as we work off calories from crepes and omelettes, and watch one another groan as we lift in the weight room, only the familiar address seems appropriate; though some of the exercisers prefer to remain distant, I am happy with my choice of familiarity, and it makes my workouts more pleasant.  At bars, charming, unthreatening men are tu whereas their boorish counterparts, as an assertion of distance, are decidedly vous.  My criteria may not be conventional, but, after all, I have learned this year that convention is not always the wisest way to make decisions, and in any case, this system works for me.  If nothing else, at lease I can say that in these months in Paris, I have, finally, learned how to wield the power of tu.

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