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French has a T-V distinction in the second person singular. That is, it uses two different sets of pronouns: tu and vous and their various forms. The usage of tu and vous depends on the kind of relationship (formal or informal) that exists between the speaker and the person with whom they are speaking and the age differences between these subjects. [1]
Nowadays, the form of lequel is typically replaced with qui when the antecedent is a person: « la femme de qui j'ai parlé ». Further, if the preposition is de , even if it is not the de of the possession, dont has started to be used (with both person and non-person antecedents): « la femme dont j'ai parlé ».
The prepositions à (' to, at ') and de (' of, from ') form contracted forms with the masculine and plural articles le and les: au, du, aux, and des, respectively.. Like the, the French definite article is used with a noun referring to a specific item when both the speaker and the audience know what the item is.
However, there was much variation; in 1596, Étienne Pasquier observed in his comprehensive survey Recherches de la France that the French sometimes used vous to inferiors as well as to superiors "selon la facilité de nos naturels" ("according to our natural tendencies"). In poetry, tu was often used to address kings or to speak to God. [22]
In spoken French, the plurality of most nouns is marked not on the form of the noun itself but by a preceding article or determiner (cf. la maison [la mɛzɔ̃] 'the house' > les maisons [le mɛzɔ̃] 'the houses'; mon frère [mɔ̃ fʁɛːʁ] 'my brother' > mes frères [me fʁɛːʁ] 'my brothers').
D'la (de la) is an example where the word de has nearly fallen out of usage over time and has become contracted. This argument does apply to other words, and this phenomenon has become widespread throughout contemporary French language. A defining characteristic of the sociolect is the deliberate use of the pronoun tu to indicate
The form vós, used instead of tu to address someone respectfully, follows the same concordance rules as the French vous (verbs in second person plural, adjectives in singular), and vostè follows the same concordance rules as the Spanish usted (verbs in third person).
A pronoun can still carry gender even if it does not inflect for it; for example, in the French sentence je suis petit ("I am small") the speaker is male and so the pronoun je is masculine, whereas in je suis petite the speaker is female and the pronoun is treated as feminine, the feminine ending -e consequently being added to the predicate ...