How do I love "thee"?
Someone asked me the other day why we don't use the thee/thou form anymore, when just about every other language makes a distinction between plural and/or singular and/or formal "you." I had no idea. Anyone know?
I took that opportunity to ask him why some people used "vous" (formal) for the Hail Mary and other people used "tu," (informal) even though the Our Father is always "tu" (the implication seeming to be that you can be familiar with God, but not His mother...) Apparently back in '66 someone decided since the Bible is all in "tu," the liturgy should be as well...well, this bothered some people and so as a sort of compromise the Hail Mary was kept in "vous," until recently when people, having forgotten the whole compromise story, decided "tu" just made more sense.
Apparently somewhere in Jerusalem they have the Our Father engraved in all these different languages. It appears twice in French, once in vous and once in tu
I took that opportunity to ask him why some people used "vous" (formal) for the Hail Mary and other people used "tu," (informal) even though the Our Father is always "tu" (the implication seeming to be that you can be familiar with God, but not His mother...) Apparently back in '66 someone decided since the Bible is all in "tu," the liturgy should be as well...well, this bothered some people and so as a sort of compromise the Hail Mary was kept in "vous," until recently when people, having forgotten the whole compromise story, decided "tu" just made more sense.
Apparently somewhere in Jerusalem they have the Our Father engraved in all these different languages. It appears twice in French, once in vous and once in tu
posted by Etrangère | 3:57 PM
2 Comments:
Wow, what a controversy! To me, I would think it would definitely be "vous" since you can't get much more royal and majestic than God. Wouldn't you use the "vous" form with most elders, especially your parents? Or would you not with your parents since they're so familiar? I guess I'd have to go with whatever most French folks use when speaking to their fathers.
The thing is, the folks who can trace their lineage back to royalty and tend to be kinda snooty about things will call their parents vous- but pretty much no one else does. There's this weird dynamic between formality and familiarity...Like I feel I want to show my students respect by calling them vous and not tu, but apparently that acts to put distance between us too...
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