Talk:French/Lessons/Formal speech

Vous vs. tu in web forums
In this book it says that one should always use 'vous' if one is not familiar with the person one is talking to. This seams clear so far.

However, in my native language, German, there is this similar concept of 'Du'(=tu) and 'Sie'(=vous). But we have all adopted the habit of never using 'Sie' and use only 'Du' (informal) on online forums, even though we are not familiar with the persons we are talking to. Everybody does so, and everybody is pretty comfortable with that.

Does this phenomenon also occur among french speaking people? Human Robot 08:52, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Most of the time on french speaking forums, people usally say tu each others. For example, at fr.wikipedia.org, almost everyone say tu on talk pages BUT contrary to de.wikipedia.org, the pages say vous, for exemple for the password prompt.
 * QUOTE : Votre nom d'utilisateur
 * Votre mot de passe:

the Rule of Thumb for tu vs. vous
In this book it notes that " As a rule of thumb, use "tu" only when you would call that person by his first name, otherwise use "vous"." Is this rule of thumb ideal? It contradicts with a couple previous sentences, particularly "It is used when talking to someone who is important, someone who is older than you are, or someone with whom you are unfamiliar." For example, it has probably been over 10 years (when a teenager) since I last called any person by anything other than their first name, including bosses, clients, professors, complete strangers I had just met, etc. I talk to a ridiculous amount of people (of all ages, "ranks" of importance) and they, too, refer to me by my first name back. Neither party in many cases know the other party's last name until we become more familiar. (unsigned comment by User: TheCuriosity on 17 Feb 2010).
 * If you can justify a better rule please edit the main text. The main contributers to this book are no longer active, and I think no-one else is likely to change it. Recent Runes (talk) 23:48, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I didn't want to jump on anyone's toes, so-to-speak TheCuriosity (talk) 04:52, 21 February 2010 (UTC)