In Culture

Where we talk about Tu, Lei, Noi, Voi e Loro – or the Courtesy Forms of the Italian language

by The Luluest – translated by Juniper

Every language has its courtesy forms: they allow speakers to module their register to different situation on the basis of the ceremony required. In one previous article, we’ve already seen how these courtesy forms could create parallel worlds to standard languages, as for the Japanese. Anyway, even a “simpler” language, like the Italian one, can have its courteous oddities.

One of the commonest aspects, often misunderstood and funny, it’s the habit to address someone in an inappropriate way: do we use singular or plural? Male or female? And, above all, why do we do it that way??

**The democratic Tu (You, singular)**

In this reality, getting more and more anglophile, Italians use and abuse the pronoun in its 2^nd person singular form to address…well…anyone. Calling people Tu has become the standard in so many cases, above all professional ones, but it would be more correct to use this pronoun only when with people we know well, we have a tight or friendly relationship with, or with children.

This “democratic” use of Tu does not come from far away over the Ocean: it also derives from the very root of Italian, the Latin language. In Ancient Rome it was common to call everyone Tu: slaves and emperors, all the same, till the Imperial form of government changed.

**The Augustan Voi (You, plural) and the magnificent Noi (We)**

With the dawn of the Diocletian tetrarchy in 293 a.D., there was not an individual ruling the Roman Empire: there were two Augustus and two Caesars. If you wanted to address someone powerful then, a new form of courtesy was developed, the Voi. Obviously, this fact affected the type of people one was addressing, too: at the same time, indeed, the pluralis majestati (the Royal We) was born, i.e. the habit of talking about ourselves using the 1^st plural pronoun.

It may sound odd, but both Voi and the Royal We are still used today. The Plural We is rarely used by government, religious and academic institutions. Even the Church now uses it with parsimony, after Pope John Paul I abolished it in 1978, but for exceptional occasions.

Voi has had a longer life, and it is still abundantly used in regional variants, above all in Southern Italy. A big push towards the use of Voi was given by Fascism and its will to emulate the golden age of the Roman Empire. After World War II, though, calling someone Voi reminds us so strongly of Fascism, that it fell out of use, leaving room for Lei (She).

**The stately Lei (She)**

I think it may make foreigners laugh when learning Italian, but the most common courtesy form in our language wants us to address our counterpart as if we were talking to a woman, i.e. using the female 3^rd person pronoun. And so, we call everyone Lei (she).

This specific courtesy form derives from the Spanish dominion in Italy of the 16^th Century, when aristocracy used to address the mighty ones with an Usted (which is a form of the third person singular pronoun). This third person, once translated into Italian, was expressed in the female version of the pronoun in order to keep the tradition of calling someone with a higher status “Vostra Signoria”. In this transition, too, there has been an influence by the government form: when there was abundancy of Augusts and Caesars, we moved to the use of Voi: in the same way, when we saw the dawn of absolutist monarchies during the Renaissance, we moved to the use of Lei, together with thecentralization of power.

Tu, Lei, Voi…and then there’s Noi (We)

Tu, Voi and Lei, though, were not replaced suddenly; they pacifically cohabited in a sort of mixture of uses for very long. Who could prove it more efficiently than our old Alessandro?

In The Betrothed the father of the Italian language used each and every form of courtesy: he calls Tu people he had a familiar relationship with, he calls Lei people with a higher rank (the book is indeed set at the time of the Spanish dominion), and he calls Voi people from a lower rank.

Anyway, our good old Manzoni does more than that: the narrator of the book uses the Noi. Now, what the…why does a writer decide to use the Royal We? Easy, in this case the Easy-Business-Complicating Bureau wants this specific form to talk about ourselves in a plural form, using the pluralis modestiae, or modesty plural, which places the speaker in a subordinate position.

Actually, not only Manzoni gave us a good sample of this modesty plural, but sometimes he also mixes it up with other types of plural that requires the use on Noi by the author: didactic, often used by teachers, narrative, to have author and reader get closer, and inclusive, to be used as colloquial.

**…and Loro (They)?**

Come what may, even if Tu is slowly replacing the other courtesy forms, there still are some formal occasions in which we must use Lei. And what if we have to address multiple speakers? We use Voi, don’t we? In the end, Voi is used in legal and commercial phrases to address companies as composed by people we address calling Lei.

No, actually, it would not be grammatically correct. Voi is indeed the plural form of Tu, not of Lei. To be absolutely precise, we should use Loro (They): such an uncommon and old form, it has become even more satiric and parodic than Voi.

Anyhow, in a future moving faster and faster towards gender equality and politically correctness it could be a valid option to dust off a little bit of formal, irreproachable, and above all equal courtesy, no?