Here are five very useful examples of conversational French that have come up in conversations or that I’ve overheard in Montréal over the past few days.
You can read the notes for each example for tips on how to give a more natural feel to your French when you speak and to understand what you hear.
1. Comment il s’appelle, lui?
What’s his name? What’s that guy’s name?
When asking about names, you’ve learned to ask comment s’appelle-t-il? and comment t’appelles-tu?, etc., using the inversion after comment.
It’s perfectly correct, but it’s not usually what people say spontaneously. The person who asked comment il s’appelle, lui? didn’t use the inversion after comment. Similarly, you can ask comment tu t’appelles?
You’ll hear il pronounced very frequently as i during conversations. When this informal pronunciation appears in writing, it’s almost always written as y. The question sounded like comment y s’appelle, lui? There’s no liaison (no t sound) between comment and y.
2. T’as pas mal de stock.
You’ve got a lot of stuff.
This was said to me when I was carrying several bags of stuff. The word stock doesn’t refer to merchandise here. It just means “stuff” or “things.”
Pas mal here isn’t a negative. It’s a set expression meaning “a lot” or “quite a bit.” Another example: j’étais pas mal fatigué, “I was pretty tired.”
When using pas mal, keep the words pas and mal together in the same breath when you say them.
Don’t say: j’étais pas / mal fatigué.
Say: j’étais / pas mal fatigué.
Using the example from above:
Don’t say: t’as pas / mal de stock.
Say: t’as / pas mal de stock.
T’as is an informal way of saying tu as.
3. Fait que, dans le fond…
So, basically…
The expression fait que tends to pepper a lot of informal conversations in French. It means “so,” like alors or donc. For example: fait que, dans le fond, t’as deux choix, “so, basically, you’ve got two choices.” The expression fait que is a shortened form of ça fait que.
Fait que has two syllables, but you’ll also hear it pronounced with one as faque (sounds like fak).
As for dans le fond, it’s used in the same way that English speakers say “basically” to resume. You’ll hear faque dans le fond… just as often as the English expression “so, basically…” (in other words, often!).
4. Elle veut pas.
She doesn’t want to.
The speaker didn’t say elle ne veut pas. She said elle veut pas. To tell the truth, she didn’t say elle veut pas either. She said a veut pas!
Not only did she not include ne in her negative sentence, she pronounced the subject elle informally as a. If this happens, it’s only when elle is a subject. You’d never hear someone pronounce c’est pour elle as “c’est pour a” because elle isn’t a subject here.
It’s always acceptable for you to pronounce the subject elle as elle, even during informal conversations. Native speakers certainly don’t expect to hear a non-native pronounce elle informally as a.
Back to the example above — if you still wanted to maintain some informality when you speak, you could just leave out ne and say elle veut pas, avoiding pronouncing elle as a. Leaving out ne during regular, informal conversations with friends and co-workers will go unnoticed.
Of course, you can also say the full elle ne veut pas, no problem. It’s just that in spontaneous speech during informal conversations, ne is largely absent. But you don’t have to adopt this if you don’t want to.
5. C’est quoi la saveur? C’est quoi la grandeur?
What flavour is it? What size is it?
A customer in a café asked the employee working at the cash about a drink they serve. He wanted to know what flavour it was: c’est quoi la saveur? He also wanted to know what size it was offered in: c’est quoi la grandeur?
Questions using c’est quoi? are very commonly heard in French, for example: c’est quoi le problème?, “what’s the problem?” and c’est quoi la différence?, “what’s the difference?”
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Hi Felix, great post as usual. From your first example I would also note the way the indirect pronoun “lui” is used to make the phrase more informal. It’s something that took me a while to get the hang of and it would seem that no one ever mentions that when talking about informal French 🙂 For example:
– Moi, je suis tanné.
– Lui, il fait quoi comme job?
– T’as fini, toi?
I have a fair idea that using moi/lui/toi/ça before a sentence is used to stress the subject you are talking about. Sort of the way you would raise your voice when saying “I” in the sentence ‘Personally, /I/ would not have done that”
You’re absolutely right, Miguel. Your examples are good ones. Sometimes it’s used for emphasis as Eva mentioned, other times not. In the example from this entry (comment il s’appelle, lui?), it was clear to everybody that the question could only refer to him, so I wouldn’t say it was necessarily used for emphasis here.
I was always curious about the word “pas mal” ever since I learned it in a “quebec slang” vocabulary list a few months again when I started learning French. This is a bit more informative and useful.
Now, out of my own curiousity, yesterday I was talking with a French guy and I had interrupted his story, so I said ‘je m’excuse, Je t’ai interrompu’. He promptly responded that, although very correct and the intention is understood, this expression is rather used in formal situations and with strangers in France. He gave me a more informal alternative, Je t’ai coupé. Is this phrase also commonly used in Québec? The last thing I want to sound like, is a lawyer.
Pas mal is used “pas mal often” in French! This expression is known throughout the francophonie, not just in Québec.
Yes, you can say je t’ai coupé. The expression couper quelqu’un is a shortened way of saying couper la parole à quelqu’un.
From an article about the Tour de France today: C’est bien ce que t’as fait’.
Is there an informal way of saying negative questions like ‘n’est-ce pas?’
For yes-no questions, you can use c’est pas…, for example: c’est pas lui? c’est pas bon? c’est pas vrai?, etc.