Why is tu me manques backwards compared with English?

The French verb means to be missing. The absent person is its subject, and the one who feels it is the indirect object.

How do you say I miss you to someone you call vous?

Vous me manquez. The verb takes its vous ending because vous is the subject.

French · phrasebook

How to say I miss you in French

I miss you in French is tu me manques. The sentence runs the other way round from English: the person who is missed is the subject. Word for word it says you are missing to me.

Aurélien CuvelierSep 19, 2026

tu me manques

i miss you

one person you call tu

The ways to say it

tu me manques

i miss you

one person you call tu

vous me manquez

same meaning

someone you call vous, or several people

How to use it

That reversal is the whole difficulty. In the first exchange below a son on the phone tells his mother tu me manques, and the you comes first. In the second, a colleague says vous me manquez to someone they call vous: the verb changes to match the person who is missed.

The verb agrees with the one who is absent, never with the one who feels it. Whoever you miss decides the ending.

Watch out

Build the sentence the English way, with I as the subject, and you say the opposite: that the other person misses you.

In a real conversation

Each exchange is a line and its reply. Greyed letters are written and not pronounced. A tie marks a liaison, with the sound you hear under it. A label under a verb names its tense when it is not the present.

Allô maman, tu me manques beaucoup.Hello Mum, I miss you a lot.Toi aussi, mon chéri. Tu rentres quand ?You too, sweetheart. When are you coming home?

Vous me manquez déjà, le bureau est triste sans vous.I already miss you, the office is sad without you.Merci, vous aussi. Je reviens vous voir bientôt.Thank you, you too. I will come back to see you soon.

Questions people ask

Why is tu me manques backwards compared with English?: The French verb means to be missing. The absent person is its subject, and the one who feels it is the indirect object.
How do you say I miss you to someone you call vous?: Vous me manquez. The verb takes its vous ending because vous is the subject.

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Written by

Aurélien Cuvelier Founder, NuanceDeck

Aurélien Cuvelier builds NuanceDeck: the app, and the verification pipeline behind its dictionary. Every entry is grounded in the official TORFL lexical minimum and a 20,000-word frequency corpus, and every example sentence passes a certification review before it ships.

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