In a scene from La Galère, Mimi, Isabelle and Claude don’t know where Stéphanie is. They’re worried because Stéphanie has been feeling down.
Claude mentions that Stéphanie’s car is still at home, so that means that she must’ve gone out to get drunk. (She wouldn’t have taken her car if she’d gone out to drink.)
Here’s how the conversation went. (C=Claude; I=Isabelle)
C. — Est allée se paqueter, c’est pour ça qu’a pas pris son auto.
I. — C’est pas son genre.
C. — Mais oui c’est son genre!
C. — She’s gone to get wasted, that’s why she didn’t take her car.
I. — That’s not like her.
C. — Oh yes it is!
The verb se paqueter sounds like se pacter. The expression aller se paqueter means “to go get wasted, hammered…”
There’s also the adjective paqueté (pronounced pacté), which means drunk, loaded, wasted…, like in the expression être paqueté.
In the first line, elle wasn’t pronounced two times: est allée… and c’est pour ça qu’a pas pris… It’s understood though. There’s a liaison in est allée, which sounds like est tallée.
[Dialogue from La Galère, season 4, episode 10, Radio-Canada, Montreal, 14 November 2011.]
So useful to have the pronunciation explained along with the translations! So many times I have heard a word or phrase and didn’t recognize it until I learned the informal pronunciation. Thanks for the great blog.
I’m glad that it helps! I want to see informal speech presented right from the beginning to learners in courses and methods. (If anything can wait, it’s the formal stuff.) But I guess we’re not ready for that yet. Until then, I’ll keep blogging. 🙂
Hi, I have a few of questions about “elle est.”
First, does it more commonly sound like “est” or like “e’ est”, with a longer vowel sound?
Second, is “al est” possible as well?
Lastly, how formal does “elle est” sound when it’s pronounced more or less the French way? That is, are there times it would be out of place?
Elle est can contract to an è sound. Yes, you can hear al est too.
I can’t answer your last question. I feel that you’ll have to sense this through a lot of exposure to conversational French. Only the context can tell you if something is out of place.
Thanks.
I’m not sure you understood my first question. I was asking this: When “elle est” is reduced to an è sound, is the sound a long one (what I transcribed as “e’ est”) or a short one (“est”)? Or can it be either?
Sorry for repeating myself if you understood the first time.
Like one contracted short sound — è. Do you have access to La Galère on tou.tv? If you want to hear this quote, it’s in season 4, episode 10. Start listening at 39:00. You’ll hear one short è sound.
To me it sounded long, as if the è sounds of “elle” and “est” were running together. But that must be my ears playing tricks on me.
Thanks.
As long as you heard it and understand, then you’ve got it. 🙂
Keep listening to more French so that you can hear it used in different contexts. This will help to answer your other question.