Navigating French: When to Use Formal and Informal Language

In French, the choice between formal and informal language depends on the social context, the relationship between speakers, and the level of politeness or respect that is appropriate for the situation.

When to Use Formal French

• Formal French is typically used in professional settings, with strangers, elders, or people in authority.
• It is common in official documents, business communications, formal speeches, or when addressing someone for the first time.
• Formal French uses polite pronouns like “vous” instead of the informal “tu” and often includes more respectful and elaborate phrasing.

When to Use Informal French

• Informal French is used among family, friends, peers, and people of the same age or younger when the relationship is close or casual.
• It uses the pronoun “tu” and simpler, more relaxed expressions.
• Informal French is common in everyday conversations, casual emails, texts, or social media.

Summary

• Use formal French in respectful, professional, or unfamiliar contexts.
• Use informal French with close acquaintances, friends, and family.
• When in doubt, start formal and adapt by cues from the other person.

This distinction is important because using the wrong formality level may be perceived as disrespectful or overly distant in French culture.

References

• Diglossia: the state of the art

• English Usage and Needs in the Workforce: Review of the Literature and Relevance to Higher Education Curriculum Development.

• Determinants of Using Formal vs Informal Financial Sector in BRICS Group

• The Usage Frequency of Formal vs. Informal Styles in TV Ad Language - Based on Ad Involvement, Sentence Types, and Articulation Context

• The use of audiovisual media as a means of acquiring informal French

• Schooling and language usage matter in heritage bilingual processing: Sortal classifiers in Mandarin

• Formal education vs. informal education in the Roma community—a silent confrontation where nobody wins

• On the Role of Informal vs. Formal Context of Language Experience in Italian–German Primary School Children

• Uncovering Language in Business Communication Space: Variation between Formal and Informal Language in Mandailing Natal

• Precept vs. usage: Pronominal case forms in Late Modern English

• Les marqueurs de contraste au contraire, par contre et en revanche en français parlé et écrit, formel et informel

• Olá, Bonjour, Salve! XFORMAL: A Benchmark for Multilingual Formality Style Transfer

• In What Languages are Generative Language Models the Most Formal? Analyzing Formality Distribution across Languages

• CoCoA-MT: A Dataset and Benchmark for Contrastive Controlled MT with Application to Formality

• Compounds and multi-word expressions in French

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• Comparing Styles across Languages: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Politeness

• Parlez-vous francais? Effects of structure-based versus dynamic-usage-based approaches on oral proficiency

• Machine Translation to Control Formality Features in the Target Language