| Possiamo Darci del Tu? |
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Part 2: Literary Precedence
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"This does not reflect current realities. Nowadays, the polite plural of "Lei" is "voi." "Lei" is no longer capitalized."
BRERUS
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As noted, there are four ways of saying you in Italian: tu, voi, Lei, and Loro. Tu (for one person) and voi (for two or more people) are the familiar forms, used only with family members, children, and close friends. It wasn't always like this. There was no form of courteous address in early Latin: even the emperor was addressed as tu. The voi form (vos in imperial Latin) was the first to take hold as a way of addressing superiors: only during the Renaissance did lei make its debut, along with such florid courtesy forms as la signoria vostra or l'eccellenza vostra. As all such forms are feminine, lei was the obvious pronoun to accompany them, though ella and essa were occasionally used (and still are) when no-holds-barred formality was required.
Literary Precedence
By the 19th century all three forms - tu, voi, and lei - were in common use. In Alessandro Manzoni's novel I Promessi Sposi, for example, there are almost infinite social variations in the use of such allocutive pronouns. The tu form is generally used by adults addressing children, masters addressing servants, or between young friends of relatively humble social standing.
But Renzo and Lucia (the betrothed of the title) address each other as voi, even after they are married; and the children always address each other as voi or lei. By the early years of this century, lei had become the preferred courtesy form, especially in northern and central Italy. Mussolini considered it both unmanly and foreign (presumably modeled on the Spanish Usted, though there is little evidence for this), and tried to ban it in favor of voi. The result, however, was that tu, an extremely intimate form, became more popular as a form of address between friends.
Usage Today
Today voi is still in common use only in southern Italy, apart from certain formulaic phrases in business correspondence, where it is generally capitalized: "riscontriamo la Vostra pregiata del 6 u.s. per comunicarVi..." ("having received your esteemed letter of the sixth of last month [u.s. = ultimo scorso], we wish to inform you..."). Tu is used to address God ("Padre nostro, che sei nei cieli...") and the common man ("Vota socialista!"); it is also used as the unique form of address in a number of central Italian dialects.
Gli date del lei, del tu, del voi?
Do you address him as lei, tu, or voi? Tu, or the tu form of the verb, is informal, and is used when talking with friend and relations, while the third-person lei form is used to address strangers, teachers, professional superiors, distant acquaintances, and anyone about whom you're unsure.
Possiamo Darci del Tu? > Page 1, 2
