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.
Merci beaucoup. Quand “The Quebecois French Prononciation Guide” va sortir?
I’m still working on the contractions book. I’ll have something else ready even before that one, though. More news soon. 🙂
OMG I clicked on your link to go hear the song and uffffff…… I don’t understand a thing they say, even with the lyrics righ on my face…
It’s challenging for sure! A reader asked if we could look at the lyrics, so I’ll take bits and pieces every once in a while for us to look at.
Yes, please do. You can’t imagine how much you help us QCfrench-learners