Tu, Vous, And The Bread Lady

Last weekend I mentioned the Bread Lady and our adventure with half baguettes. I didn't tell you everything. The next morning she came by and while we were exchanging bread and coins she asked me a question.

Me and the Bread Lady. Her name is Roseline, but it's more fun to call her the Bread Lady.

I was embarrassed because she talks so fast that I often don't know what she says and this was one of those times. It's a nice compliment that the people we interact with here make no accommodation for our being foreign. They just talk to us they way they talk to everyone else. Simply smiling and nodding only works when I hear most of what she says and miss a word here and there. But I can't pull that off if I understood nothing. That would be so wrong.

So I had to ask her to repeat her question. It sounded like "daddy poh tow ?" Both times.

I said I was sorry, but I just didn't understand. She repeated once again, v-e-r-y slowly. "Tu t'ennuies pas trop ?" I felt like a fool. A very simple question. You're not too bored, are you ? She knew that I was home alone with the dog while Ken was in Paris.

Oh no, I said, there's plenty to do. Then it hit me. She used the familiar tu instead of the formal vous. She's done this before, and says mostly tu to Ken, but I've always stuck with vous since she's around my age and I'm the foreigner. But the ambiguity is kind of weird. Going back and forth between tu and vous is a strange thing to do and some people can be offended if you say tu to them and then revert back to the formal vous.

So I just blurted it out. "Est-ce qu'on se dit tu ou est-ce qu'on se dit vous ?" Do we say tu or vous to each other ?

She looked me right in the eye and replied, "Je. M'en. Fous." I added the periods because she pronounced each word as if it were its own sentence. I. Don't. Care. Then she smiled.

Then I don't either, I said, and we both laughed.

"You know," she said, "that I know some people who get very upset if I don't say vous to them. Mostly older people. Then there are the Portuguese people I know, real from Portugal Portuguese, whose children say vous to each other."

I asked if they did that in Portuguese or in French. It was in French. Children usually only use vous for adults who are not immediate family.

So now I'm officially on familiar terms with the Bread Lady. Glad we cleared that up.