LONDON: The informal version of “you” in the French language — “tu” — seems to be taking over on social media, at the expense of the formal “vous,” according to the BBC. As in many countries, online modes of address in French are more relaxed than in face-to-face encounters. But will this have a permanent effect on the French language? Anthony Besson calls most people “vous.”
As a young man, it is a sign of respect to those older than him, and he’s often meeting new people through his work in PR in Paris. Yet this all changes on social media. “I always use ‘tu’ on Twitter,” Besson says. “And not just because it takes up fewer of the 140 characters!” Lots of other French people do exactly the same.
“Tu” is normally for family and friends, but when you’re communicating through @ symbols, joining networks and tweeting under a pseudonym, a formal “vous” can seem out of place, even to someone you’ve never met.
Antonio Casilli, professor of Digital Humanities at Telecom ParisTech engineering school, says the web has been used as a tool for breaking down social barriers from its very beginning, resulting in a distinctively “egalitarian political discourse.”
The pervasive pattern of speech on the Web in the 1990s, he says, was “cyber-utopian California-style libertarian discourse, inherited from 1960s counter-culture.”
Tu and Twitter: End for ‘vous’ in French?
