OffQc | Québécois French Guide

Take a look at these examples of French:

– à part le matin
– à m’tanne avec ça
– à shake d’l’épaule

All three phrases come from the song Donne-moi-z’en by Bernard Adamus. (Do you remember we looked at the meaning of donne-moi-z-en here?)

In the phrases above, you might think à is the preposition à, but in fact it’s not. This à is an informal pronunciation of the subject pronoun elle that you’ll often hear in spoken language. (It sounds just like the preposition à, though.)

The phrases above are spoken equivalents of:

– elle part le matin
– elle me tanne avec ça
– elle shake de l’épaule

Knowing then that à is an informal pronunciation of elle, do you now understand the meaning of the three phrases?

à part le matin
she leaves in the morning

à m’tanne avec ça
she gets on my case about it, she goes on and on about it to me, etc.

à shake d’l’épaule
she shakes her shoulder (she shakes from the shoulder)

The informal verb shaker is pronounced like the English shake + é. The conjugated form shake sounds like the English shake.

In à m’tanne avec ça, the vowel of me has dropped. Shift the m’ to the end of à, then say tanne.