Say this sentence:
Puis là, je lui dis que je n’aime pas ça.
So then, I tell him that I do not like that.
If I asked you to transform this sentence into something more colloquial sounding, the way you might hear it said during a regular conversation, could you do it?
Maybe you know that the ne in the negative construction ne… pas generally gets dropped, so we can start with that:
Puis là, je lui dis que j’aime pas ça.
And maybe you also know that puis is almost always pronounced spontaneously as pis (pi) during everyday conversations, so we can change that too:
Pis là, je lui dis que j’aime pas ça.
There’s another thing we can change here to make it sound like something you might hear someone say spontaneously in a conversation. The title of this post gives it away — it has to do with the pronunciation of lui:
Pis là, j’y dis que j’aime pas ça.
Here, lui got pronounced as y (i). You don’t necessarily have to start pronouncing it like this yourself too, but do learn to recognise it.
je lui dis que…, j’y dis que…
je lui donne…, j’y donne…
on lui a dit que…, on y a dit que…
We saw an example of lui pronounced as y in #868: j’ai juste à y flasher ça dans’ face! If we spell everything in full, we get: j’ai juste à lui flasher ça dans la face!
You’d only ever catch lui pronounced as y when it’s put before a verb (either conjugated or in the infinitive form) like in the examples above, as an indirect object pronoun.
Lui wouldn’t be pronounced as y in these examples:
Sans lui, je pense que ça aurait été différent.
Je me suis beaucoup occupée de lui.
Avec lui, je pense que notre équipe ira loin.
Il s’appelle Martin, lui.
Let’s go back to the first example:
Pis là, j’y dis que j’aime pas ça.
Don’t forget that the Québécois pronounce the letter d as dz when it comes before the i sound. So dis sounds like dzi.
If you’ve been listening to lots of spoken French from Québec, then you know just what the vowel sounds like in the words là, pas and ça. If you’re not sure what it sounds like, please go turn your radio on!
Here’s the unmodified sentence from the beginning of this post:
Puis là, je lui dis que je n’aime pas ça.
Can you say it now the way you might happen to hear it said spontaneously during a conversation?
On peut-tu dire aussi “j’ui dis”? (moi j’ai déjà entendu une madame québécoise dire ça)
IN your 5 reasons to learn to speak quebecois https://offqc.com/2013/05/24/5-terribly-compelling-reasons-for-an-anglo-to-learn-to-speak-like-the-quebecois-616/ you said
“Don’t go overboard with the accent and expressions though, trying to be ultra-québécois! Just be yourself.”
what would you suggest is a good accent and speaking style to copy?
Good question!
Copy the people you want to speak like.
What I meant by what you quoted is that, as an example, sometimes people will buy a Québécois phrasebook and try to incorporate absolutely everything in it when they speak. The result sounds like a caricature of someone from Québec.
If you model yourself on speakers rather than on phrasebooks and learning materials, you’ll speak a more natural-sounding French.
Use learning materials (phrasebook, textbooks, this blog) as a guide only. Use them to increase your awareness about French, but let the francophones you speak with be the models.