Timeline for Is "De qui parles-tu" (for example) as formal as its English equivalent, or is it normal for the French to casually say that ?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 10, 2019 at 8:21 | comment | added | Shautieh | I agree with you @Eauquidort . Vouvoiement and formality are orthogonal, and I am a metropolitan French speaker. | |
| Jul 9, 2019 at 13:49 | comment | added | Eau qui dort | So you can easily imagine using vous and the uninverted order when asking your way to someone in a city (casual situation but social distance between strangers), while tu and inversion can coexist between near-equals in a formal situation (for example, a teacher giving a lecture and asking their assistant to do something with "pourrais-tu" or two journalists -colleagues- using formal inversion on a TV show but still addressing each other with tu) | |
| Jul 9, 2019 at 13:46 | comment | added | Eau qui dort | I'm not sure I agree that vouvoiement and interrogative inversion are necessarily linked. T/V has to do with the relative social standing of the interlocutors (where T is a sign of solidarity and V of distance), while the different interrogative forms depends on the formality of the situation the conversation is taking place in. | |
| Jul 9, 2019 at 11:30 | review | First posts | |||
| Jul 9, 2019 at 13:38 | |||||
| Jul 9, 2019 at 11:25 | history | answered | Daniel | CC BY-SA 4.0 |