Re: French & Eng. vis-a-vis Dutch WAS: 2nd pers. pron. for God

En réponse à "Douglas Koller, Latin & French" <latinfrench@...>:

>
> Things may have changed and I may be misremembering, but I was under
> the impression that whether one used "tu" or "vous" in French
> depended on where one fell along the Protestant/Catholic divide. I
> don't remember which uses/used which.
>
Well, since Protestantism is extremely minoritary in France (nowadays it's only
the fourth religion, with Catholicism, Islam and Judaism counting many more
followers, and is comparable with Buddhism), I don't think this division is
very meaningfull. As far as I know, it's more a matter of generation. While the
generation of my grand-parents learned to use "vous" for God, and that the
generation of my parents has had a mixed education, depending on the place (in
towns, using "tu" for God was accepted more rapidly then in the countryside),
my generation only uses "tu" for God, and finds it extremely strange to
use "vous" for it. Also, my grandparents for instance have switched to "tu" to
talk to God instead of "vous", like many of their generation, so the use
of "vous" has nearly disappeared.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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