i'm putting this all in an lj-cut, cause it's boring
i asked my friend for clarification the other day, because i don't fully understand the use of this word.
you can say:
rendez-vous à la place de la mairie à midi
and it has two semantic meanings:
a) "meeting" at the place of the town hall
b) "make yourself" there for the meeting at the town hall
but if i was talking to a friend, i would say:
a) rendez-vous à la place, ok?
b) rends-toi à la place, (i just realized that that ok is still ambiguous)
each letter means the same as the former phrase corresponding to that letter, only the second b) was changed from formal to informal.
but i still think using the imperative form to a friend is not as agreeable/friendly as hearing the communal "let's meet..." (although i suppose you could say rendons-nous, but i've never heard anyone say it), so i asked my friend if you could ever change the noun "rendez-vous" to a "rends-toi" to clarify that the person you are meeting with is someone that you tutoyer. after all, french is supposed to be a precise language, and shouldn't my speaking-partner [insert my new most usable french word - "interlocuteur"] know the type of situation in which i shall be placing myself, and potentially him as well (if the rendez-vous is one of our own).
i have a meeting with my professor:
j'ai rendez-vous avec mon prof de français
i have a meeting with my friend:
j'ai rends-toi avec mon ami.
it's simple - i am going to start writing french semantic textbooks, from the eyes of a silly foreigner.
my friend just laughed, he said it was funny to think of it like that, yet insightful, for when you are brought up in a language, things become automatic and systematic, and it's hard to think about things differently after having acquired the notion of its meaning. so here's a quote from a book i have for class, one of those ones they put at the beginning of chapters, it's in english: "in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few". chew on that.
i can't decide if i'm happier coming to french as a 20 year old, or if i would have rather been bilingual from the start - both have pros and cons.
also i like in english how you can remove "that" but it's still there, whether it's written or not... i struggled with this concept writing papers in high school
par exemple:
i realize (that) you are not my friend anymore
just kidding, lets be friends