YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU,YOU : 

TU ?? VOUS ?

(English version) (lien vers la version française :  https://sousmonhumbleloupe.blogspot.ch/2016/12/youyou-you-youyou-tu-vous.html)  

( Upon receiving an email, this morning (in French) from a person that I have never met, but that LinkedIn offered me as a possible correspondant, and I responded : affirmative. The subject this friendly email raised to my reflexion is not new to me, but has often come up to me in the past, particularly as I began acknowledging my own feeling about a modern trend that all my life, I had largely authorised to run me over. It may be more relevant to think it over for cultures which, like French, include in their languages several expressions and levels of respect in adressing people. I hope I've managed to make sense even for those who do not speak such a language. You'll be judges of it. )

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When I speak in English  - modern English  - I use  one unique form  to adress people, whether I am in contact with them for the very first time, or whether they are my family and familiars  -  obviously, because English affords no other... but in French, thank God, which offers a familiar AND a polite form to adress people, the which charm and relevancy I am extremely sensitive to, I much prefer to generally use the latter, which expresses respect, towards those who, a priori, have a right to this trait of my consideration, reserving the familiar form for those it suits to do so, that is : my familiars, precisely. Towards them is no sign of disrespect, but one of intimacy.

And what makes an old-fashionned concept even stranger, perhaps, to a modern mind, I must confess that I even use the polite form with some of my families with whom, of common agreement, we have decided to keep our relationship under that quality of coloration, if I may say so.

Many will more likely argue that «  if we had to bother about those old-fashionned great-grandma principles nowadays, at work, for example, it would definitely be too burdensome and frankly ridiculous - thank God, the rampant (American) English overtaking of our obsolete cultures have simplified all that !!!...»...

This modern argument originally came from the business world under the full coloration of American practices, but has now swept over the world not only in business, but in all-around daily human behaviour and inter-relationships, everywhere and in all sectors being concerned in one way or another with the Occidental culture, so that now, familiarity is being proned for everyone in every situation, and in every realm of modern man societies.

Well, let me reply to this argument with a simple thought :

America is the only country where you can go to work, one morning, and find the key to your office doesn't work anymore. Then you feel a tap on your shoulder and turn around  - a colleague's there : you're requested to go straight away to the boss's office : that's how you find out that you've been FIRED !

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