When To Use Tu and Vous in French

If we head back to the days of classical Latin, the literary language of the Roman Empire from about 75BC to 3rd century AD, we find that tu was used as a singular form of you, used when addressing only one person. Meanwhile, vos was the plural version, used when addressing multiple people, from which vous descends. This is still the case today in modern French. Tu can only be used to address one person. As soon as you are referencing more than one person, then vous must be used.

Meanwhile, as Latin evolved and Late Latin emerges, another new distinction also becomes apparent, in which the plural form, vos, is used to address venerable individuals, such as emperors or religious leaders, even though this is a single person.

Increasingly, this type of usage spread to other strata of society where people used it as a way of showing respect to someone of a higher social standing. And this gave us the origins of how the vous form is used in modern French today.

You should always use vous to show respect to another individual, unless the need to show this respect does not exist – for example, when speaking to a child or when you have been invited to use the tu form by the other speaker, or if it is a person you know very well.