can you believe after so many years of using french’s “c'est la vie” because the nuance doesn’t translate, we’ve finally obtained a flawless translation with “that’s just the way it is on this bitch of an earth"
I previously made a post about Russian Podcasts and German Podcasts. Here is one for French since I started the language. Many you can find on iTunes, on Android using Pocket Casts, or on their own websites/RSS feed. There are several more podcasts in French, but these should be enough for now.
It sounds simple enough, but let me warn you: if it’s easy to understand the rule, it’s complicated to apply it. It’s already hard enough for an English speaker to refer to a thing by him or her, yet it is even harder to use c'est + a person. It sounds in English like you are saying it’s + person… very very bad… You need to train a lot on this concept before it becomes natural to you.
A – To Avoid Mistakes -
In English, you say “He is a friend. He is charming.” So you use He is + noun (a friend) as well as He is + adjective (charming). Well, in French, we use 2 different constructions.
Il/elle est + adjective qualificative (plural ils/elles sont) Il est grand. Elle est blonde. Ils sont amusants.
C’est + (article, adjective possessive or demonstrative…) + NOUN C’est un ami. C’est mon mari. C’est cette voiture. Ce sont mes cousins.
(or C’est mes cousins… should be “ce sont + plural” – but we use c’est + plural a lot in spoken French although it’s a mistake…).
Adverbs (très, un peu, incroyablement…) don’t “count”. Dismiss them and look for the word that comes after: Do you have a noun? If so, use “c’est”.
Examples (The nouns are in bold):
Le Père Noël: c’est un hommegentil.
Il est très gros.
Il est incroyablement généreux.
C’est un personnagemagique.
Les Jackson 5: Ils sont célèbres.
Ce sont des chanteurs.
Ils sont mignons et talentueux.
Look for the articles (un, une, du, de la, de l’, des, le, la, l’, les) If you have an article, it’s going to be followed by a noun. So don’t say “Il est un/Elle est une / Il sont des etc…”. Say “C’est un,C’est une” with a strong liaison, “Ce sont des” etc…. (But watch out for the adverb “un peu”: for that one you’d say “Il est un peu timide” for example…
Now, the construction “Il est un…” is not wrong. But it’s now used only in formal French, so much so that it now sounds “wrong” in spoken French. And it cannot be used in all situations. In other words, it’s quite complicated, and forums go on and on about “c’est ≠ il est” because French people don’t seem to agree either :-) If you use my explanation, you won’t make mistake. It might not be the big picture, but it’s practical.
Now, some particular cases…
B – Particular Cases -
1 - Adjectives That Come Before The Noun
As you know, some adjectives come before the noun; grand, petit, joli, jeune, vrai, bon, mauvais…So what should you do when you have a sentence with one of these adjectives? Well, you have to see if the adjective is followed by a noun, or if it is alone. If there is a noun, use C’est.
C’est une belle voiture. Elle est belle.
2 – Nouns Of Profession, Nationality, Religion
Nouns of profession, nationality, religion… can be used as adjectives – only if there is no other adjective describing it.
So, when it is used as an adjective, use Il/Elle est:
.Il est français. Il est medecin. Elle est juive.
But you can also use it as a noun. In this case it needs an companion word (article, possessive or demonstrative adjectives….)
C’est un Français. C’est un medecin. C’est une juive.
Now, if you wanted to say “He is an intelligent Frenchman”, Frenchman cannot be an adjective because you have another adjective there. You have only one possibility ; “C’est un Français intelligent.” You cannot say “Il est français intelligent…”
3 – C’est + Adjective Masculine Singular
To make a live comment, react to something, share your experience, we use the construction c’est + adjective masculine singular. It’s your emotion that comes through, not a specific description.
C’est beau ! C’est bon ! C’est chaud !
Watch out that the adjective cannot be in another gender/number ; “C’est belle.” is not possible, even if you are looking at “la mer” (the sea). The construction demands a masculine singular adjective.
This construction is also use to make comments about something as a category:
La mer, c’est beau!
I am not talking about one sea or ocean in particular, but all the seas in the world. So, let’s imagine some scenarios:
You are talking about the Mediterranée : you could say. “Comme elle est belle, la mer Méditerranée. Elle est bleue, elle est transparente. C’est vraiment une belle mer.”
You are standing in front of the bay of Cassis, and are overwhelmed by the beauty of the landscape. You say “Woah… c’est beau!!” – it’s your emotion speaking, you are talking about the sea but also the light, the rocks, the feeling you are having. Kind of “how gorgeous” in English.
So now, let’s have some examples.
C – Examples -
Voici mon ami Pierre. C’est un homme charmant (c’est + noun).
Il est grand et brun (il est + adj).
Il n’est pas marié (il est + adj).
C’est un bon musicien (c’est + noun).
Il n’est pas riche, mais il est passionné (il est + adj).
C’est un rêveur (c’est + noun)
Il est un peu timide (il est + adj), mais c’est un bon copain (c’est + noun).
This is my friend Peter. He is a charming man. He is tall and has brown hair. He is not married. He is a good musician. He is not rich, but he is passionate. He is a dreamer, he is a bit shy, but he is a good friend.
Live situation:
C: Comment sont vos tartes ?
How are your pies?
S: Ce sont des tartes faites maison (c’est + noun).
S: Oui, et nos tartes, elles sont vraiment délicieuses (il est + adj).
Yes, and our pies, they are really delicious.
La mer est bleue. Elle est verte. Elle est violette. Elle est noire (il est + adj). C’est un élément changeant (c’est + noun) C’est toujours beau (c’est + category = adj masculine singular), la mer. Mais la mer des Iles grecques, elle est particulièrement belle (il est + adj) = The sea is blue. It is green. It is violet. It is black. It’s a changing element. The sea, it’s always beautiful. But the sea of the Greek islands, it’s particularly gorgeous.
English to French to Québécois translations. The accuracy is killing me lol
Yeah, when people say Canadians speak French, we really don’t. At all. We just call it French.
When I was younger I lived with a girl from Paris for two months, and every time she’d meet someone who spoke Quebecois they would speak to her thinking she’d understand it, and she would just nod and smile.
Why the fuck is it still called French?
Because its still french??? We have our own dialect and accent yes but it is still french. All over Québec there is different dialects. The french spoken in Montréal isn’t the same as the french spoken in Saguenay for example.
Je vais juste mettre la réponse de «l’insolente linguiste» ici. TLDR; C’est normal que ça ressemble pas à du français vu la façon dont ils l’écrivent. Et puis, c’est niaiseux de comparer la norme a un dialecte.. Le «Français» de cette image est aussi bien utilisé par les Québécois!
Okay, ça, c'est de la belle grosse merde. Ça doit faire 10 ans que cette image circule, au moins! Je l'ai démolie dans mon premier livre, d'ailleurs On confond toutes les variations linguistiques, c'est vraiment épouvantable. En plus, les versions «québécoises» sont écrites dans une orthographe fantaisiste qui stigmatise encore plus le français québécois. Pourquoi du côté québécois, c'est écrit «d'javusa», mais du côté français, c'est «déjà vu ça»? La seule différence, c'est qu'on fait pas le «é»!!! Sérieux, je peux pas croire que ça pogne encore, cette affaire-là.
Faque je me suis un peu amusée, pis j'ai fait l'équivalent, tiens, mais de l'autre bord:
Prenez tous les commentaires qui vous viennent à l'esprit, comme, mettons, «mais ça s'écrit pas nécessairement comme ça» ou «mais c'est pas tous les Français qui parlent de même» ou «mais ça dépend du contexte», pis vous allez avoir tous les bons arguments pour l'image de merde.
@tepitome, arrête de dévaloriser la variante que parlent les québécois. Ça reste du français. Moi non plus quand les français se mettent à parler avec des variantes qui leur sont propres, j’comprends rien.
As someone who lives not too far from the Canadian border in New England, I honestly wish they taught the Québécois dialect either along with or instead of the Parisian French I learned in high school. And I say “Parisian French” because even in France there are so many other dialects. IMO there’s a lot of misguided ways of teaching and while i LOVED my main French teacher, I wish we all had focused on more of a worldwide/functional Francophone vocabulary instead of just what’s in France, and only the Capitol City at that.
Quick english summary of the response chloek3 included for my non-french-speaking followers:
The above image has been making the rounds for at least ten years and the way it transcribes the québécois phrases further stigmatizes that dialect of french. For instance, for “déjà vu ça” they write “d'javusa” even though the only difference is not pronouncing the é in déjà. (The examples included show ways that québécois people use the standard dialect while parisian french people use a non-standard version. When reading this picture, remember that 1. it’s not necessarily written like that, 2. not all french people speak the same, and 3. it depends on context.
Description: Curious children watch as the French Admiral Ronarc'h decorates his marines on a grassy field in the background, during a military ceremony in Saint-Folquin on September 10th, 1917.
Description: Dia Bagou, a French Senegalese soldier from the class of 1912, poses against a fence for an autochrome photograph by Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud.
