French

Here's something that annoys me about speaking French: having to choose between the 'tu' and the 'vous' forms.

Here, embedded within the very structure of a language, is something that forces you to communicate a view as to how you and another person are going to relate. It's a terrible, terrible feature, and it is one of the saving graces of English that it lacks this (as well as gender-specific nouns - phew!).

You can say that you should just use the polite form 'vous' until you're sure, but it's really not that simple. There are circumstances, particularly in Africa it seems, where using the 'vous' form can be strange and even insulting. If you're introduced to someone in a scenario where everyone's being matey and jokey and you start with the 'vous' you can actually put a bit of a dampener on things I think (what? you're not my mate? oh you want to keep the distance...). But then of course there will be times when you jump straight in with a 'tu' and offend someone, particularly if they are older than you. And when Cameroonian people automatically 'vous' me because I'm white or when people who are older than me start 'tu'-ing me, I sometimes feel awkward or, as someone who's trying to establish himself as an equal in an adult world, occasionally offended.

Of course there is no doubt that I'm misinterpreting certain situations and that my hesitancy over choosing 'tu' or 'vous' worsens the problem. My point is simply that it is unfortunate that a language can force you to think about these things and to continually make these judgements.

English, truly the language of the common man! Who'd have thought something so egalitarian could have come from such a pompous, class-ridden nation? I know that's a bit of an unjustified connection but it was fun to say. I'd look up how it came to be that English is different to so many languages in this respect but I can't be bothered right now. If you have any idea yourself, I'd be interested to know.