I’m on the committee of our photo club and I organise the weekly meetings and send out follow-up emails / reminders. I also run some of the weekly sessions.
I tend to use “tu” and always check with new members if I may tutoyer them.
I recently emailed one of the members (a woman in her early 70s, slightly younger than me) she’s been in the club some time. and I used “tu”. She’s replied this morning - amicably - but using “vous”. I’m assuming in future I should use “vous” with her.
Quite frankly, I’m tempted to give up o this whole “tu” thing and just use “vous” to everybody all the time - I always used to because I never really got to grips with the “tu” tense of verbs and it’s only in recent years I’ve made the effort.
It is complicated, you have to keep a mental map of how you address everybody. If this one lady uses Vous, I would just respond with that, and keep using Tu for everybody else.
When I first moved to France I would address my French father-in-law with ‘tu’ (at his request) but my mother-in-law with ‘vous’; I found that very challenging at the time!
I even know somebody (in their late 30’s) who was bought up in a very well to do family, who had to address his parents, individually, using ‘vous’. I guess that must be pretty old fashioned these days!
In her reply was she using vous in the singular form to you, or in the plural and referring to the group?
Personally when I next saw them in person I would avoid either tu or vous until they’d used one or the other. Instead of saying “comment vas -tu?” I’d ask “comment ça va?” or “tout se passe bien?”. Similarly instead of saying something like “vas-y” I’d use the third person (“on y va?”).
I like using Tu amongst people I want to consider as friends so wouldn’t want one person to prevent me from using it with all the others.
at a recent gathering I met a Tahitian lady. The conversation opened with her telling me that Tahitians only ever use “tu” as they are a “friendly People”… and she hoped I wouldn’t take her non-use of Vous as an insult…
and a few days before, my hairdresser had told me that “French people prefer tu…” although I suspect it’s more likely just her generation (20-30 ish)
and now, you’ve got me checking my emails…
French friends seem to send me written hugs and kisses and use vous
whereas those same friends embrace me warmly and exchange kisses and they use tu when we speak face to face…
I always use tu in emails if we’ve shared tu face to face…
I have given up struggling @SuePJ as I have found that as an Englishman of a certain advanced age (81) I can use whatever I like without a flicker even of disapproval from those I address.
I have mentioned before Christelle our erstwhile cleaner who immediately accepted my request to use tu as we chatted informally so much. I then discovered that she continued to use vous to me. Not only that but once when I mistakenly used vous to her, she corrected me laughingly in mock disapproval and affront, saying ‘vous, vous?’ ‘Whatever happened to tu?’
I am convinced that it is all an evil plot by all(?) the other languages in the world to confuse and confound English people, because they are the only ones with a sensible language. (cue @vero) Even my beloved Welsh dictionary has at least 5 forms of ‘you’.
And don’t even get me started on female tables for goodness’ sake. If all the tables in the world are female, how the hell can we make any more tables. ??
Probably not. In schools where my wife has done exchanges (in those great days when exchanges were possible) the norm was that all teachers would vouvoyer the head, however long they’d been there and irrespective of age. The head would tutoie or vouvoie according to some arcane algorithm
I think tu/vous is easy to get hung up on, but - unless you hit someone who wants to take offence - if you get one wrong, then just carry on with whatever the other person is using.
I have a theory, that it’s like the gender of nouns. French children unconsciously get a knowledge of whom they tutoient and whom they vouvoient in the same way as they absorb gender.
We don’t, and so there will always be a difficulty.
I don’t think over-vouvoyer is a bad thing, and with a wide circle of friends and acquaintances you’ll make mistakes.
I have the same theory, that in England we learn nouns as in table, chair, car etc., but French children learn la table, la chaise, la voiture etc… IE, they learn the whole 2 words as if they are one. Still means that they have to remember the endings of non-nouns that follow though.
I have put this to some French people, some disagree, some agree, and some haven’t a clue what I am talking about.
I’ve found that too but the ones who answer when I say, for example, “le X ou la X?” rephrase it with un and une and then respond, so I think they learn the words with indefinite articles rather than definite ones. I’m sure @vero will correct us all though
As far as I’m aware children tutoyer their teachers in maternelle, but switch to vous when they go to their elementary school. It’s embedded.
It can be a great linguistic exercise to write your emails Sue without using either! Eg instead of “you should bring your X to next session”using tu or vous, write “chaque personne devrait apporter…”
I try my best to get it right, even though I know most would forgive a foreigner. To me it shows respect to the country.
and it’s not only Brits who have problems/challenges with tu and vous
The French husband of the Tahitian lady told me he sometimes gets into a right pickle in Tahiti… It’s bred in me to say vous , it comes naturally … when a stranger or someone of rank says tu… I can only reply vous . …
(I’ve tried to explain this so you understand his predicament… and, indeed, I felt sorry for him… )
I think French dictionaries need to be structured completely differently. There should only be two sections for nouns: a “la” section and a “le” section and, within each, the words then can be in alphabetical order. A tiny italic “f” or “m” after a noun is no use whatsoever for remembering anything.
Certainly when I was living in Brazil there was only one form of “you” used by everyone - você, the Portuguese equivalent of “vous”
andI rather hope that by one’s polite demeanour and tone of voice… whether one says tu or vous one will be accepted as not being deliberately rude… and one’s conversation can roll gently along…
We would use the indefinite article you are quite right, saying eg non non c’est UN élixir magique que tu fabriques, là.
I’m a special case and clearly learnt by some sort of osmosis - you can’t tell when I’m speaking French but I was educated almost entirely in English and German, (did a few months of collège in Nice when I was 9/10 and decided it was not for me).
I read a lot which is probably why I don’t make mistakes, and someone must have taught me but I have no memory of it.
Even my beloved Welsh dictionary has at least 5 forms of ‘you’. 
