A woman who was making a phone call hung up when there was no answer on the other end. In French, she an equivalent of: “There’s no answer. Is this the right number?”
To say that there wasn’t any answer, she used the verb répondre. Here’s what she said:
Ça répond pas. C’est-tu le bon numéro ça?
The expression ça répond pas is the one that’s always used to say that there’s no answer on the other end. You can understand ça here as meaning the same thing as on.
If you were talking about a telephone call you’d made yesterday and we’re telling someone about it today, you could say instead ça répondait pas, there was no answer.
The question c’est-tu le bon numéro ça? means the same thing as est-ce que c’est le bon numéro ça? The tu after c’est transforms the sentence into a yes-no question, in an informal way.
Bon here means right, correct. Le bon numéro, the right number. La bonne adresse, the right address. La bonne réponse, the right answer.
___
Refresh your French or get caught up: The OffQc book 1000 Québécois French is a condensed version of all the language that appeared in the first 1000 posts on OffQc. You can buy and download it here.