Tu ou Vous?

Using properly the casual address "tu" or the formal address "vous" is very important when you speak French. Use "vous" at the wrong time and you'll sound strange and overly formal ; use "tu" wrongly and you might very well offend the person you're talking to... which is what happened to Boris, a young French learner, in the video above. Poor Boris, he learned the hard way!

This text comes from the book "Je vis en France : vingt lectures faciles pour découvrir la civilisation française" by Marie Barthe and Bernadette Chovelon. Here is the class handout (slightly reformatted from the original.)

There are many, many resources on the Internet about this topic. Here is one I like: