A mother in Montréal spoke with her young boy. The boy made a comment in jest; laughing, his mother retorted, “You sure of that?”
Can you say how she might’ve asked this in French?
Here’s what she asked:
T’es sûr de t’ça, toi?
You sure of that?
T’es is a spoken form of tu es — it sounds like té.
What about de t’ça?
De t’ça simply means de ça; it’s a spoken form that you’ll hear frequently in conversations. How is it pronounced? Say de with a t sound on the end of it, then say ça.
If you’re wondering now if you need to say de t’ça instead of de ça, you don’t. De ça is always fine, even when speaking informally with francophone friends. But you can also try it out, if you really want to.
If you know how the yes-no tu works in spoken language, maybe your guess as to how the mother said this was one of these:
T’es-tu sûr de ça, toi?
T’es-tu sûr de t’ça, toi?
Although possible, that’s not how she said it.
Remember, in t’es-tu, the only part that means you is t’. The tu here serves only to transform t’es into a yes-no question. (This tu serves the same purpose as est-ce que.)
If your answer to the question used tu es instead of t’es, know that you’re not very likely to hear that in spoken language. Tu es virtually always contracts to t’es, unless the speaker wishes to give particular emphasis to his words.
