Why does everyone in The Lord of the Rings use "vous" ?

Question

I am a beginner French learner, yet my native language has tu/vous distinction, loaned from French, so I thought I would have no problems with it. Alas. I was watching The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and noticed that pretty much everyone uses vous to talk to each other (I even drew the chart below).

I find this unexpected. I would expect Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, and Gimli (all close friends) all use tu among each other. I would definitely expect Gollum being addressed with tu - no-one has much respect for him. And I find it odd Gandalf addresses Saruman and Balrog with vous ("Vous ne passerez pas !") when they are in the middle of a fight.

As far as I can tell from searching on the Internet, French people don't speak that way outside the Middle-Earth (do they?). So where else would I expect to find people using vous so extensively? Is this some kind of archaism that is supposed to give me medieval courtesy vibes?

Edit: the arrow between two uruks had to be pink for tu.

Answer 1

(French native here) You probably have been taught, as a simplifed rule, that 'vous' should be used for plural or to emphasize politeness, and 'tu' for singular/close relationship.

As already answered by others, 'vous' may also be used to emphasize a hierarchical relationship : work authority, social hierarchy, nobility assessment (dated), respect for older/more experienced people.

More generally, 'vous' may be used to stress that the interlocutor belongs to a different group/category/class: cultural, political, racial (especially in LOTR!), that the speaker can't (or don't want to) belong to (distancing).

Subtle variation: when speaking to an individual, it could mean you want in fact address the whole group or category/class behind (implicit plural). For example Gandalf saying "Vous ne passerez pas !" can also be understood as 'You shall not pass [all of you evil creatures]!'

Finally, if 'vous' is used whereas there is no apparent distinction to be made, that means the speaker wants to purposely put some distance with the other person (i.e., don't want to be friends). Note that if you use 'tu' with someone and they answer with 'vous', that means you crossed the line and you are expected to switch back to 'vous'.

Hobbits talking to Gollum is a typical example of this distancing (no longer a hobbit + don't want to be friend).

Answer 2

One possible reason is that the film is translated from English, which does not make distinction between tu and vous. This is however not very likely (at least, if we are dealing with the official translation, which is expected to be high quality, although I have seen vous to crop in in other films.)

A more likely reason is that the usage of vous is adopted from that typical for French nobility, where pretty much every nobleman/noblewoman would refer as vous to their peers and those higher in the social hierarchy, but as tu to those lower in rank, especially non-nobles. E.g., I believe this is how the heros of the Dumas' novels refer to each other, even when speaking within their family.

While I think that this is plausible, I am not sure whether the tu/vous distinction was used as a mark of politeness in France in medieval times, which would be more representative of the kind of story we find in the "Lord of the Rings".

Answer 3

As a short answer and addition to the other answers:

Is this some kind of archaism that is supposed to give me medieval courtesy vibes?

Yes, mostly. It would feel weird, too casual and anachronistic to use "tu" all the time.

But it also related to the general tone of The Lord of the Rings. It can be described as poetic, noble, pure.

Game of Thrones for example aims for a completely different tone, filthy, crude and unromanticized. While I haven't seen or read the French adaptation, I would assume there's a more prevalent usage of "tu".

Having almost every character use "vous" is faithful to the romantic tone and consistent with the fact that the characters speak in a literary, poetic manner. Frequent inversions, usage of "ne", vocabulary rarely used in modern speech, etc.

Answer 4

The movie is mistranslated. This is proven by the interactions involving the hobbits.

In the English book version of The Return of the King, Appendix F, section II, paragraph 3, Tolkien states that Hobbitish had lost the vous form. This resulted in Pippin using the tu form when deferentially speaking to the Steward of Gondor.

The Westron tongue made in the pronouns of the second person (and often also in those of the third) a distinction, independent of number, between 'familiar' and 'deferential' forms. It was, however, one of the peculiarities of Shire-usage that the deferential forms had gone out of colloquial use. They lingered only among the villagers, especially of the Westfarthing, who used them as endearments. This was one of the things referred to when people of Gondor spoke of the strangeness of Hobbit-speech. Peregrin Took, for instance, in his first few days in Minas Tirith used the familiar forms to people of all ranks, including the Lord Denethor himself. This may have amused the aged Steward, but it must have astonished his servants. No doubt this free use of the familiar forms helped to spread the popular rumour that Peregrin was a person of very high rank in his own country.

Answer 5

The Appendix F, section II, paragraph 3 of The Return of the King has already been mentioned by others.

There's an interesting note from Daniel Lauzon, the translator of the most recent French edition of the Lord of the Rings. It explains why vous or tu have been used, depending on the relationships between characters:

En quelques endroits, on a voulu marquer ces distinctions par l'emploi non systématique du pronom thou. Peu fréquent de nos jours et indéniablement archaïque, ce pronom indique le plus souvent un style cérémonieux; mais un changement de pronoms, de you à thou (ou thee), entend parfois montrer, à défaut d'autre moyen, une modification significative des termes d'adresse : l'abandon de la forme respectueuse (soit, entre adultes, la forme attendue) au profit de la forme familière.

[La traduction française respecte ces principes (thou devient systématiquement tu). Toutefois, la distinction entre tutoiement et voussoiement (absente en anglais moderne) étant encore bien vivante en français, il a fallu, de manière plus générale, choisir entre les deux formes afin d'exprimer différents rapports (familiarité, autorité, égalité, connivence, etc.). (Note du traducteur)]