More on pronouns + a weather report

The situation with tu and vous in French is more complex than I used to think. For example, when I worked in Paris, years ago, the people I worked for called me by my first name but said vous to me. I said vous back to them, of course, and I called them Monsieur X or Madame Y. They were a generation older than I was, and they were professors while I was just a teaching assistant.

In other words, used of first-name forms in French does not necessarily correspond to uses of tu in the place of vous.

In Washington, where I worked with a group of French translators, we all called each other by our first names, but we all said vous to each other. For them, I think, that was the "American way" to do things. Some of them were my age, and some were older. Only the head translator was addressed as "Madame Y," in English and in French.

The translators were being less formal than they would have been in a similar work situation in France. Another concession to American conventions was the fact that we didn't all shake hands in greeting each other when we got to work in the morning.

I'm sure that thou, thee, thy, and thine correspond not just grammatically to the French tu forms, but also in usage. They are the second-person singular form, the one parents would have used in talking to their children.

The second-person plural you was the formal, not the familiar, form of address in older (and some current but archaic) dialects of English. Think about what we call the "royal we," which is the first-person plural substitued for the singular I." That's a similar formal usage of the plural instead of the singular. Look at what Wikipedia says about the royal we.

It's interesting that Ginny (and I'm sure others) who speak American English perceive thou as a formal pronoun of address. That must be because it is used rarely, and because it's mainly used in religious contexts (Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done...). Look at what Wikipedia says about the English pronoun thou.

Whether or not you use a person's first name has long been the same kind of marker in American English as is the tu/vous distinction in French, I think. It seems to me obvious that saying you to a person in English doesn't necessarily equate to saying vous in French. I know, intuitively, that I don't say the equivalent of vous in English when I'm talking to my mother, my sister, Walt, or my good friends Cheryl and Ginny. But of course we say you to each other. That's the only pronoun available.

But I can also see how somebody who speaks French and starts learning English would get the impression that English-speaking people never say tu to each other and always say vous, with all that implies in a French socio-cultural context.

French and English really are two langues ennemies. They are so similar in so many ways, and so different in so many others. It makes it impossible to ever fully grasp and master all the subleties of one language when your native language is the other. Just when you think you've understood the differences, you find out it's more complex than you thought.

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It was snowing when I got up at 7:00 this morning, but very lightly. Now at 8:30 it has stopped, but the ground is lightly dusted. A lot of the rest of France is getting a lot more snow than we are, at least for now.

Yesterday the temperature hovered around the freezing point, thick gray clouds blew by low in the sky, and the wind fairly howled. But no snow.

A report on yesterday's TV news showed a foot or so of fresh snow on the ground in a place called Dompierre-les-Eglises, just 160 km/100 mi. south of Saint-Aignan. Apparently, yesterday's snow just missed us.

I heard on the radio earlier this morning that it was snowing in the Paris area and that the snow was slowly moving west. That could mean we'll get some more later today.