When to Use Tu and Vous

French has two ways of saying you in the singular, and the choice is never neutral. Tu signals familiarity, warmth, intimacy, peer status, or social parity. Vous signals respect, professional distance, age difference, formality, or the simple absence of a relationship. English speakers often imagine that vous is just "polite you" and tu is "casual you," but the social weight is heavier than that. Calling a stranger tu in the wrong context can come across as condescending or aggressive. Calling a close friend vous can come across as cold or sarcastic. Getting this right is not optional — it is one of the very first things native speakers notice about you, and the right choice tells them how to relate to you in turn.

This page gives you a practical decision tree, the cultural rules that override the tree in specific contexts, the etiquette of switching from vous to tu (and the rare reverse switch), and the honest acknowledgment that the rules are shifting in modern France. By the end, you should be able to walk into a French café, a French office, or a French dinner party and pick the right pronoun without thinking.

The default decision tree

When you do not know which to use, follow this tree:

1. Is the addressee a child (under 12 or so)? → tu.
2. Is the addressee a close family member (parents, siblings, cousins, intimate partners)? → tu.
3. Is the addressee a close friend? → tu.
4. Is the addressee a peer in your same generation, in an informal setting? → probably tu (but see exceptions).
5. Is the addressee an animal? → tu (always).
6. Otherwise — and especially with strangers, professionals, elders, or anyone in a formal context — use vous.

The single rule that covers almost every doubtful case: when in doubt, use vous. Vous is the safe default. You can be over-formal with vous and the worst that happens is the other person says on peut se tutoyer and you switch. You cannot be over-casual with tu without giving offense.

These three lines establish the prototypes. Strangers get vous. Friends get tu. Children always get tu. Notice the matched register markers: vous sentences tend to come with bonjour, s'il vous plaît, and the conditional or polite question forms; tu sentences come with salut, ça va, and direct present-tense questions.

The strangers-are-always-vous rule

In France, an adult stranger is vous, no matter how casual the encounter. The teenager working the cash register at the bakery: vous. The person you bumped into in the metro: vous. The taxi driver: vous. The neighbor you have seen in the elevator twice: vous. The person at the party who someone just introduced you to: vous until they invite the switch.

This rule applies even when you are very sure the person is much younger than you. A 50-year-old customer in a shop addresses the 18-year-old cashier as vous, and the cashier addresses the customer as vous. The asymmetry that English-speaking customers sometimes expect — adult to teen as tu, teen to adult as vous — does not exist in France. Both go to vous. This is the most common point where North American visitors slip up: they tutoyer a young salesperson in a store and the salesperson is offended without showing it.

Service contexts: vous in both directions

In any commercial transaction — café, restaurant, shop, hotel, taxi, bank, doctor's office — both parties use vous. Customer to server, server to customer. This is not negotiable in adult settings; even very informal cafés where the server is your age and obviously friendly will keep vous during the transaction.

If you become a regular and friendly with a particular server or shopkeeper, the relationship may eventually shift to tu over months or years, usually proposed by the more senior party. Until that happens, you stay in vous, even if every visit is warm and chatty.

Workplaces: it depends entirely on the company

French workplaces split into two cultures, and you have to read the room.

Traditional, formal workplaces (banks, law firms, large administrative organizations, ministries, schools at upper levels, hospitals): default is vous among colleagues. Tu is reserved for very close work friendships and only after months. You vouvoyer your boss, your colleagues, your subordinates, the security guard, the receptionist. The expectation is mutual respect through formality.

Informal workplaces (startups, advertising agencies, creative industries, tech companies, retail under a casual brand): default is tu on day one. The CEO introduces themself with je m'appelle Marc, on se tutoie ici. Using vous in this environment can come across as standoffish or as if you are signaling that you do not want to be part of the team.

When you start a new job, listen for ten minutes before you commit to a pronoun. Watch how people address each other in meetings. Default to vous and let someone — usually a more senior or established colleague — propose the switch.

Schools

In schools, the convention varies by age:

• Lower grades (école primaire, maternelle): the teacher uses tu with the children; the children use vous (sometimes tu) with the teacher and address them as Maître or Maîtresse.
• Middle school (collège): mutual vous is the increasingly common default, marking the shift to adolescent autonomy. Many teachers use vous with students from sixième on.
• High school (lycée): vous both ways is standard.
• University: mutual vous between professor and student. Among students, tu is universal.

This contrasts with the older pattern where teachers used tu with students through high school. The modern preference is to mark adolescent students as deserving the formal pronoun, partly to model adult communication.

Online and digital communication

The internet is mostly informal. On social media, comment threads, gaming platforms, casual forums, tu is the default among strangers — the digital space is treated like a peer environment, even between people who have never met.

But on professional platforms (LinkedIn, work email, customer service emails, official websites that address you directly), vous returns. A B2C company's chatbot will say vous to you. A bank's email will say vous. A peer's tweet will say tu even if you have never met them.

Asking for directions, asking for help

Default to vous with any adult stranger. Excusez-moi, vous pouvez me dire, vous savez où. Tutoying a stranger to ask directions reads as either a child speaking or as someone being deliberately rude.

Switching from vous to tu

The switch from vous to tu — called passer au tutoiement or se tutoyer — is a small social ceremony. It is almost always proposed by the more senior, older, or higher-status party (the host to a guest, the boss to a new hire, the older friend's parent to the new partner). The standard formula:

On peut se tutoyer ? Or, more familiar: On se dit tu ?

If accepted (almost always), both parties switch from that point on. There is no need to negotiate further; the switch applies to all future conversations.

The senior party may also simply switch unilaterally and signal it through their first tu utterance — at which point you follow. If a French boss says tu vas bien ? on day three, the proposal is made; you respond with tu from then on.

Reverting from tu to vous

Returning to vous after tu is rare and almost always sounds cold or hostile. The exceptions: public or formal contexts (a journalist interviewing a friend on TV may use vous on camera); conflict or distancing (a couple arguing may shift to vous sarcastically — loaded, theatrical); professional reset (a colleague met in a new professional context). If you accidentally slip back to vous because you are nervous, just say pardon, je te tutoie and continue — the slip is forgiven instantly.

Plural: vous always

In the plural, vous is the only option. There is no plural tu. You always use vous — and vous verb forms — for any group of two or more people, regardless of how close you are with each individual. This is the only situation where vous is unmarked: it is the plural you, not the formal you.

In casual European French, you may hear children or very informal speakers attempting plural-tu forms (vous-z-aut', les copains), but the verb still inflects as vous. Just learn that all groups are vous.

Regional and varietal notes

Quebec French uses tu more readily with strangers than European French; a Quebec cashier may tutoyer a customer of similar age. Quebec also has a distinctive interrogative particle -tu (as in t'as-tu vu ça ?) unrelated to the pronoun. Belgian and Swiss French broadly follow the European-French pattern. African French tends more formal, with vous the default longer than in metropolitan France. The rules above are calibrated to metropolitan France; ask local speakers for other regions.

Common Mistakes

The first three are the most common errors English-speaking learners make. They come from a mental model where tu is "casual" and vous is "polite," missing the layer where vous is also "the default with anyone you do not have a relationship with." Reset your default to vous and you will avoid the worst slips.

Key takeaways

• Default to vous with all adult strangers, professionals, elders, anyone you do not know personally. This is the safe choice.
• Use tu with children, family, close friends, peers in informal settings, animals, and within self-consciously informal workplaces.
• In service contexts, both parties use vous regardless of age or apparent friendliness.
• The switch to tu (on peut se tutoyer ?) is usually proposed by the more senior or older party.
• In the plural, vous is the only option — no exceptions.
• Online, casual platforms default to tu among strangers; professional platforms maintain vous.
• The cost of being too formal is low; the cost of being too familiar can be a damaged relationship. Err formal.