how we really speak
after yesterday’s ask i realised that lots of you didn’t know either how lax french is nowadays. so here’s my own little guide. remember this is spoken, private french and doesn’t apply to formal situations.
- we don’t use négations. we say ‘je sais pas’ (i don’t know), ‘il en veut pas’ (he doesn’t want it), on a pas à le faire (we don’t have to do it),
- speaking of which, we don’t really use ‘nous’ either. we use ‘on’ instead. so ‘we’ve arrived’ becomes ‘on est arrivé-es’ or ‘shall we go’ becomes ‘on y va?’,
- speaking of which, our questions are often affirmative sentences with a question mark (understand : a high-pitched tone) at the end : ‘are you coming’ is ‘(est-ce que) tu viens?’ and ‘do you want one’ is ‘(est-ce que) t’en veux un-e?’,
- speaking of which, we chew words. when followed by words starting with a consonant, personal pronouns (in my example sujet and COD) can lose their last letter : ‘i’m telling you!’ is ‘j’te l’dis!’ (or, actually, ‘ch’te l’dis’), or ‘plus’ (more, anymore) becomes ‘pu’ (chais pu), ‘puis’ (then) becomes ‘pi’ (et pi c’est tout)…,
- speaking of which, we’re lazy. so ‘je’ can be ‘che’ (chais pas), ‘il’ can be ‘y’ (look, there’s a cat : r’garde, y’a un chat!) and grunt : lots of ‘euh’ (uh), ‘ah’, ‘bah’ (: hesitation), ‘ben’ (: well), ‘hein’ (: tf?) and ‘rhooo’ or ‘rhaaa’ (: displeasure) ; we often start sentences with ‘but’ : ‘mais tu saoules!’ (you’re annoying),
- speaking of which, on top of dropping négations, we can drop pronouns, even though it’s a bit rarer. ‘you’re being a pain in my ass’ should be ‘tu me fais chier’ because that person is annoying you specifically, but we can say ‘tu fais chier’, maybe to make it universal, after all we are dramatic,
- speaking of which, we swear a lot and are quite sarcastic, use irony very often. when someone managed to do something we find easy, we’ll go with something like “aaah, putain, t’es un as, toi!” (you’re a real champ),
- speaking of which, we repeat (personal) pronouns - at the beginning or the end of our sentences. when asked a question, we’re likely to answer with ‘moi, j’aime bien les films d’action’ aka ‘me, i prefer action movies’ and go ‘qu’est-ce qu’il en penserait, lui?’ : ‘what would he think, him?’ (tonic pronouns, careful!),
- speaking of which, we like to use a mode called conditionnel to indicate a wish or an hypothesis. so lots of ‘si j’avais su, j’aurais dit oui’ (had i known, i’d have said yes), ‘j’aimerais bien pouvoir-’ (i wish i could-), etc,
- speaking of which, we add useless words : bien (j’aimerais bien), petit (un petit peu : a little bit), très (c’est très vrai : it’s very true), trop (je ne sais trop : i don’t really know), ça (c’est quoi, ça? : what’s this, this?)…
speaking of which, let’s stop before you all get disgusted and unfollow me. cya!
