I spent 6 years learning to speak French as a student in Australia, so naturally I was excited to try out my language skills on my first visit to France. Inevitably, I could understand no-one, and no-one could understand me. (The Australian accent doesn't translate well, as it turns out.) But even after some months of practice, there were still two aspects of the language I dreaded every time I spoke: mixing up feminine and masculine articles (using le instead of la) or — much worse! — using the informal pronoun when I should have used the formal variant. In standard English, we refer to just about everyone as "you". (One exception is God, who gets the archaic 'thee'.) In French, whether you refer to someone as tu or vous is an indication of your relative status to them, and if you get it wrong, well ... quelle horreur!
So I wish I'd had at the time this handy flowchart from the LA Times (via the French Embassy in NY):
That's all from us for this week. It's a long weekend for many of us here in the US, so we'll be back on Tuesday. Enjoy your (long) weekend!
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