During a conversation, a man said in French I saw ’em — not I saw them, but an informal French equivalent of I saw ’em. Do you know how to render that in French maintaining the same level of informality?
Let’s back up and start with I saw them.
Je les ai vus.
Les here means them. In spoken French, this les can contract in a similar way that the English them can contract to ’em — the initial consonant sound of les can drop. In other words, les becomes ’es.
J’es ai vus.
I saw ’em.
The liaison occurs between es and ai, so j’es ai vus sounds like jé zé vu.
I’m still working on the new contractions guide, which will deal with stuff just like this. In the meantime, if you’re new here and haven’t checked out what’s on offer in the OffQc store, you can take a look here.
