Vous vous / nous nous

Apologies if this is a somewhat elementory question (I'm still very much learning). I was reading a passage that used the phrase 'vous vous' and 'nous nous', I haven't come across this before - i.e. the doubling of 'you' and 'we'. I'm sure I heard 'vous vous' on French radio I was listening to as well. Can anyone shed any light on using vous and nous in this way?

(The phrases I read were:
"Nous nous spécialisons dans la bureautique", and "je vois que vous vous spécialisez vraiment dans la technologie de point.")

Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on February 23, 2013 at 5:45pm

It can look a bit weird at first sight, but these are examples of what are sometimes called reflexive verbs.

To cut a long story short, the first "nous" means "us" as you'd expect, and the second "nous" means "ourselves". So in French, it's as though you're literally saying "We specialise ourslves in ...". There are many verbs in French that have this 'reflexive' construction whereas in English a literal translation obviously sounds strange and you would simply say e.g. "We specialise in...".

To give a rule of thumb, verbs that tend to do this include cases where there is a genuine sense of 'reflexivity' (e.g. "He washed himself") or cases where in English there would be no object, but where the implied object is the same as the subject (e.g. if you simply say in English "He washed", or "He showered") or where there is a kind of 'implied passiveness'-- e.g. when you say in English "The room filled with smoke", you are sort of implying "The room was/became filled with smoke", and in such a case, French would tend to use a reflexive verb.

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Permalink Reply by Sean P on February 23, 2013 at 9:26pm

Neil, thank you very much for this detailed response. It's really useful reading your rules of thumb. Now I know it is about reflexive verbs I shall go and do some further reading around them.

Am I right in thinking the pronunciation of the two words stays the same (i.e. nou-nou, vou-vou)?