Use plain language, speech; thee and thou (v); in French, address a person by ‘tu’ rather than ‘vous’
In 17th century English, the forms thee and thou and you existed, similar to TU and VOUS in French. Early Friends (qv) in the English-speaking world vigorously insisted on addressing everyone by thee and thou, as a testimony (text.1) to the equal value of each person. This tradition could still be found in the 20th century among some Quakers in the United States (however, the verb following would be put into the third person singular rather than the second: e.g. thee is rather than thou art).
Eighteenth century Anglo-Saxon Friends uncompromisingly exported this practice into French: this is undoubtedly one of the reasons why they were considered uncouth in France at the time. In present-day French, the concern for the equal dignity of each person calls for weighing up two sets of considerations: on the one hand to make a statement by using tu on every occasion on the grounds just described, and on the other to respect the susceptibilities of the person being addressed by resorting to the more respectful vous (the biblically-inclined can refer to Corinthians 1 10.31-32 or Romans 14.19-21). French-speaking Friends lean strongly toward the second option; indeed nowadays they tend to tutoyer rather less readily than mainstream Protestants.
In Africa a further reason argues in favour of vous, at least by Europeans (or Whites): White missionaries used to tutoyer Africans immediately as an expression not of equality but of the Africans inferiority, as one automatically says tu to a child. Given that heritage, Europeans are well-advised to use VOUS normally in such a context, and to reserve TU for people with whom they are in fact on particularly familiar terms as individuals.
Entrée #2173, dernière mise à jour 2024-01-25