Two women shopping together in a shop were ready to pay for their items. One of the women approached a cashier; because that cashier didn’t appear to be receiving customers at the moment, the woman asked her in French an equivalent of can we pay here?
To ask the question, the woman used the verb passer. This verb is often used when talking about paying at the cash. For example, you’ll hear cashiers say passez ici!, which is an equivalent of next, please! In some stores, an automated system will tell you to proceed to the next available cash by saying something like passez à la caisse 5, meaning proceed to cashier 5.
Here’s how the woman asked her question:
On peut-tu passer ici?
Can we pay here?
(literally, can we pass here?)
On peut-tu means the same thing as est-ce qu’on peut. The tu here turns on peut into a yes-no question. It doesn’t mean you.
On peut.
On peut-tu?
We can.
Can we?
On peut savoir pourquoi.
On peut-tu savoir pourquoi?
On peut-tu savoir pourquoi t’es jamais revenu?
We can know why.
Can we know why?
Can we know why (can you tell us why) you never came back?
On peut passer ici.
On peut-tu passer ici?
We can go through here.
Can we go through (can we pay) here?
Listen to the way the Québécois pronounce passer and its conjugated forms. You can hear Korine Côté pronounce the conjugated form passe in this video from the Listen to Québécois French section. It comes in at 0:54.
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