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C’est-y pas beau? What does this mean and what’s that “y” doing in there? (#1145)

28 June 2016 by OffQc

A friend from Central America was reading a Montréal newspaper article and came across an expression he didn’t know:

C’est-y pas beau?

He asked what this expression means and what the y is doing in there.

Here’s an example context (that I’ve made up) of how the expression was used:

Le gouvernement va augmenter la taxe sur l’essence. C’est-y pas beau, ça?
The government is going to increase tax on gas. Well ain’t that nice?

Can you guess now what that y means? It means the exact same thing as tu when used informally to create a yes-no question.

C’est vraiment necessaire.
C’est-tu vraiment necessaire?

It’s really necessary.
Is it really necessary?

C’est ben cher.
C’est-tu ben cher?

It’s really expensive.
Is it really expensive?

Y and tu, when used to create informal yes-no questions, are variants of one another.

The question c’est-y pas beau? contains sarcasm. The person asking this question dislikes the situation it refers to and is using the question to highlight this fact.

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Posted in Entries #1101-1150 | Tagged c'est-tu, c'est-y, français québécois, Québécois French | 4 Comments

4 Responses

  1. on 30 June 2016 at 06:37 Gene Geppert

    I assume that liaison is used here and the t is pronounced?


    • on 30 June 2016 at 09:23 OffQc

      Yes, the t is pronounced. What’s more is that because the t comes before an i sound, it gets pronounced ts, like the ts in the English word cats. So c’est-y sounds like cé tsi. Similarly, c’est-tu sounds like cé tsu because t also sounds like ts when it comes before the u sound.


  2. on 3 July 2016 at 19:51 Ore

    Are y and tu for informal yes-no questions always interchangeable or are there certain cases where you can only use one or the other?


    • on 3 July 2016 at 21:25 OffQc

      They’re interchangeable, but tu is by far the preferred form in spoken language in Montréal. The y form is heard in rural France and Acadie (if I’m not mistaken).



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