Just another stock photo. I have no idea who this guy is.
Here’s some everyday French to learn taken from a conversation that a guy in his 30s in Montréal had with a co-worker on the phone.
We can tell from the language that this guy is on familiar terms with the person he spoke to.
One of the first things the guy asked when the other person answered the phone was:
Je dérange-tu?
Am I disturbing you? Are you busy?
Remember, the -tu in this question doesn’t mean “you.” Instead, it’s an informal yes-no question word. We reviewed this in entry #703.
Tu is always pronounced tsu in Québec, whether it means “you” or used as the informal yes-no question marker. It’s a tsitsu word!
[In the Tranches de vie video from the Listen section, the girl asks the same question but in a different way: je te dérange?]
Throughout the guy’s conversation, he used the expression fait que a lot. It’s used essentially in the same way that anglophones say “so,” or like the French word alors.
Here are a few examples of things he said using fait que:
Fait que c’est bon.
So that’s good.
Fait que c’est ça.
So there you have it.
Fait que tu peux m’appeler.
So you can call me.
Fait que je vais t’envoyer le texte.
So I’m going to send you the text.
He also asked for his co-worker’s opinion by asking:
Qu’est-ce t’en penses?
(sounds like: kess t’en penses?)
Whaddya think?
If we remove the informal contractions, we get: qu’est-ce que tu en penses? The question form qu’est-ce que often gets shortened to qu’est-ce (sounds like “kess”) before the subject tu (another example: qu’est-ce tu veux?). The combination tu en often contracts to t’en (qu’est-ce t’en penses?).
At the end of his conversation, he ended with:
OK, on se r’parle! (verb: se reparler)
OK, we’ll be in touch again!
A final note about the yes-no question marker -tu from above:
The yes-no -tu is used at an informal level of speech very frequently in Québec. This doesn’t mean that est-ce que isn’t used in Québec, however.
An example of a yes-no question that the same guy asked during his conversation using est-ce que is:
Est-ce que tu penses que tu peux faire les modifications dans le texte?
Do you think you can make the changes in the text?
