I was in the French-language Ontario school system until the end of Grade 8, and I cannot recall that we ever used the formal “vous”. As in, it wasn’t used (in class or in general in that primarily Francophone town) or taught, and the one time it came up in classwork at some point late in elementary school, it was so abnormal that the teacher had to explain it.
That sounds like typical very formal language everywhere. I have employees calling me sir and it always throws me for a loop. I don’t think I’ve called called someone sir in my entire life. I have used ma’am when trying to get the attention of a woman I don’t know, and that’s about as formal as I’ve been.
Voulez-VOUS coucher avec moi??
Welp, that’s most of my French.
That’s either inviting a social superior you’re not intimate with to bed, or a request for group sex.
inviting a social superior you’re not intimate with to bed
E.g. a prostitute propositioning a john, in the case of Lady Marmalade.
Nothing in between. Surprise me! 😍
That’s funny. When I learned french in school, I learned the formal vous and when I went to talk to actual people they would get caught off guard and confused by me using the plural you instead of singular. It did not serve me well in the real world.
The same was true about anglicismes. We learned not to use any anglicismes, but then if you go to Quebec it is part of the language.
I’m Québécois, don’t vouvoie me, I’ll think you’re calling me old.
“Tu” is definitely preferred for anyone born after 1985 in my experience unless it’s a very formal context.
In school, the younger teachers wanted to be tutoyés, and the older teachers wanted to be vouvoyés.
My buddy had the opposite version of this when we went to Japan. He was pretty good at conversational Japanese because that’s what was taught in his college courses, but most of our interactions were in a business context using keigo Japanese which is more polite and formal.
He struggled for a while, especially because we found that lot of Japanese folks would downplay their knowledge of English out of modesty. There were a number of times when our friend would struggle to find the right word and the person he was talking to would confirm the correct English word first before offering the Japanese variant.
I still use vous when speaking to strangers in general, and it’s mandatory to use vous when speaking in french to a superior in the Canadian Forces.
It varies a lot. In my mother’s family it’s all informal, but my father uses formal vous with his parents and grandchildren do the same.
I’m also working with the public and I’m used to vouvoyer pretty much everyone except people clearly younger than me. I sometimes pass for a bit of a pedantic asshole but that’s just what I’m used to.
Just switch when the other person asks.
It is part of the vernacular, school is right to say « don’t use anglicisme » they’re not there to teach vernacular, they’re there to tech proper way to talk.
Now on the « vous » most Quebecer don’t like it, maybe it’s a question about our relationship with authority, but there’s definitely time you ought to use it.
Now respect is earned not impose and since the CAQ cannot earn any respect from use they have to impose it
Yeah, I just felt there was a disconnect between what I learned in school and what would have been useful living in Québec.
The confusion about vous always came from talking to younger kids that didn’t know that I meant just them.
Had a friend tried to live in Japan, learn the language and finish his master… turns out Japanese have 4 or 5 language levels and everyone was talking to him at level one, which is the one for small child. It was pretty infuriating.
At least when I was a kid (in Ontario), we aren’t taught Quebecois French. We’re taught Parisienne French.
Exactly, and I think they should teach Canadian french. They don’t teach british english.
So you talk mostly in English with a French accent ?
Only when people try to speak French to me, how dare they?
Donc tu parles en anglais avec un accent français la plupart du temps (with some French) du coup
du coup
I see what you did here 😅
Hon hon hon!
Edit: Seriously though, je suis un ananas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l8DHoy0PUw&t=16s
I used to have a 12 hour remix of this but cannot seem to find it, though I have listened to it for hours in the past
