Tu or vous? Countries and nationalities

Tu or vous: the choice you make before speaking

French has two words for “you”, and you choose before the first sentence. Tu is for one person you are close to: family, friends, children, fellow students, and young people among themselves. Vous is for one person you keep at a respectful distance – a stranger, someone older, a shop assistant, a colleague you have just met – and for ANY group, close or not. When in doubt, use vous: nobody is offended by it, while a tu that comes too early can sound rude. French even has verbs for this: tutoyer (to say tu) and vouvoyer (to say vous), and the offer On peut se tutoyer ? marks the moment a relationship becomes informal.

– Vous êtes professeur, madame ? – Oui. Et vous, vous êtes étudiant ?– Are you a teacher, madam? – Yes. And you, are you a student?

Nationality with être: français, française

To say where you are from, use être + a nationality adjective: je suis français. The adjective agrees with the person. Most feminines add -e, and that -e wakes up the final consonant: français (the s is silent) → française (you hear a z sound); anglais → anglaise, japonais → japonaise, allemand → allemande, espagnol → espagnole. Adjectives in -ien double the n: canadien → canadienne, italien → italienne, vietnamien → vietnamienne; so does -éen: coréen → coréenne. A few already end in -e and do not change: russe, belge, suisse. The forms of être you need today: je suis, tu es, il est, elle est, vous êtes – the whole verb comes in the next unit.

Where from? Vous êtes d’où ?, venir de, habiter à / en / au

The question is Vous êtes d’où ? – or Tu es d’où ? to a friend – where d’où means “from where”. Three answers: je suis de + city (je suis de Lyon), je viens de + place, or the nationality. Venir de changes its preposition with the place: de Lyon for a city, de France for a feminine country, du Canada for a masculine one, d’Italie before a vowel. Its forms: je viens, tu viens, il vient, vous venez. To say where you live, habiter (a regular -er verb: j’habite, tu habites, il habite, vous habitez) takes à + city, en + feminine country or any country starting with a vowel, au + masculine country: j’habite à Paris, en France ; il habite au Canada. How do you know the gender? Countries ending in -e are feminine (la France, la Belgique, la Russie); the others are masculine (le Canada, le Japon, le Vietnam). The one famous exception: le Mexique.

– Tu es d’où, Yuki ? – Je suis japonaise. Je viens de Tokyo et j’habite à Paris.– Where are you from, Yuki? – I am Japanese. I come from Tokyo and I live in Paris.