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this channel is basically: "you know everything you learned in french class? yeah we don't do that here"

I learned French in US public school in the 1960s. A native French speaker recently told me that the language I learned was equivalent to 19th century French.

When I lived in France, I found that most speakers use “on” rather than “nous”.

I've had that look from a French person when I used inversion. Not pretty. Thanks for the tips.

In Québec it's common to use the inversion « tu [verbe]-tu?», e.g. tu veux-tu, tu penses-tu, tu peux-tu, etc. Then again, in Québec it's common to do a lot of stuff that will confuse Parisians.

My teacher always pushed us to invert , and not use est-ce que which she told us was for children. I always liked est-ce que because it gave you a moment to compose the rest of the phrase in your head. Inversion seemed brutally quick and for that reason more adult and firm.

Wait...I just realised it’s the same thing in English. It’s like “what say you?” Or “speak you french, good sir?” Just sounds archaic.

I can understand that these rules on inversions can apply to modern French in (some parts?) of France. But in my region of Canada anyways, spoken inversions are much more common than non-inversions, and we definitely don't consider ourselves to be "upper echelon". Vive la différence!

When I was in college we had a lot of international students. What sounded worse then formal English to me, was a foreign student using too much slang. Especially a few years out of date slang, like from movies or TV. "Hey man, I really dig that grovey chick." "She's like far out man". That may have been "cool" in the '60s, but not now.

Can you make a vid on verlan? I just heard about it and I’m so intrigued. Not only do I have to learn French forward, I also have to learn it backwards 😂

I remember hearing "T'as fais quoi ce weekend?" in the tram between all the students every Monday morning!

In the newer textbooks (even the CLE International series), to my surprise they don't even teach the formal inversion of verb & subject for interrogations to beginners ! They teach the "est-ce que" method, and the affirmative method with elevation of intonation at the end, without saying it is indeed incorrect and familiar. So it's good you mention it exists and is the correct (formal) way, to avoid some embarrassment when the formal way is needed, when writing application letters, for example.

In the course of my life, I found that French street language changes about every 5 to 10 years. Fluency means fluent for a certain age group at a particular moment in time in a precise area. When I lived in Paris, verlan was new. Today, 'hip' is the language of the 'beurs de tess' (suburban Maghreb people) that change the language. And I am not sure a 2008 sentence like "Je kiffe trop ce teuf" (I really like this party) would not sound old-fashioned today in 2019. Apart from that, real French has about five different levels, higher levels are fed new words and expressions from lower levels. The way you speak immediately puts you in a social echelon. (Read Pierre Boudieu's (La) Distinction) I could speak with politicians and business men but not with 'les mecs et les meufs' in a café. The French lady I was staying with in 1994 (a 'Sudiste') could not understand her own children when they came home from school for lunch. She got 'très énervée' about it in a funny kind of way. The people in this video speak the third level, street French, which changes all the time. Above that one has 'decent' French (Figaro, the web) and above that one has the French that politicians speak on television. Below that one has two separate languages, the French of the teenagers who try to be new and different, and various versions of patois and slang. So, when you go live in France and have learned French outside France itself, I guess 'StreetFrench.org' helps you a lot.

Omg thank you!!! Gonna stop thinking like that way before it becomes a habit! I thought the inversion question was the informal way. Haha

I’m so glad you made this video. I’m taking beginning college french (but have some knowledge from trying to learn on my own over the years). We just learned how to pose questions. And my professor did tell us about inversion but made it seem that this was INFORMAL and not unusual to ask this way. We also didn’t learn about adding the -t- on inversion because it’s not part of the 1st semester class instruction. (I actually learned that in a high school French class-which makes sense! They never teach you conversational language skills in high school. So now I have the 411. My goal is to speak French so that I can be understood in France and to speak as naturally as possible! I will look out for your upcoming videos.

What do you mean, simpler? For native Dutch and German speakers, the inversions are completely natural, and it's *not* using them that takes getting used to. 😄

Inversion is used more in Quebec. They use it on a daily basis whereas European French

Okay. I’m glad you’re saying this because there’s something about French inversions that seem awkward to me. Like, I really don’t want to say «puis-je» and «dirais-je» 😄

Many of us older people were taught according to the rules of the language police, Académie Française. On arrival in France, we soon learned that French evolves, just like other languages. We learned that spoken French is vastly different from written, academic usage. I like your lessons. You show that the language continues to evolve, despite the Academy. 50 years ago, the inversions were still used some in spoken French, at least around Poitiers.

There are actually some exceptions. You can sometimes say: "Comment vas-tu ?" without sounding awkward. It's quite hard to explain... Some examples : _ you're at a party. An old friend or a person you didn't expect shows up. If you say: _"Hé, comment vas-tu?"_ with duly noted irony, it'll sound like a sarcasm, like a way to say: _"You, here?!? WOW!"_ It could also just mean you're very happy and surprised to see this person (without any sarcasm). _ You can say as well _'Comment vas-tu?"_ when you see somebody you're having a crush on. In this situation, you usually whisper the sentence. It'll sound cute and kind of _"vulnerable"_ . In this case, not inverting the sentence is a way to accentuate a feeling.

My first instinct is always to say something like "Où travaille-t-il?", or "Êtes-vous français?" I guess I should relax when talking to most Frencg speakers.

Language is constantly changing every few years. I was born and live in Australia and didn't learn French at school. My Swiss-Italian father insisted I learn German at school and not French as we spoke French at home as my mother, who emigrated in 1950 from north of Menton speaking 1950s French but swearing in the local dialect, similar to Monagasque spoken in Monaco. I am fluent in these but people are intrigued when I converse in Paris. To top things off, My mum says my cousins in Quebec City speak "like Shakespeare" ... they still use inversions there I discovered !

Inversion is how Yoda would ask a question in French.

Completely agree for yes/no questions. There are some particular cases when inversions should still be used. For instance, you meet a stranger that is not a youngster, and you want to ask where he comes from. You want to be polite, so you're gonna use vous and not tu. If you say "vous venez d'où ?" it can be seen as inquisitive or even a little aggressive, when saying "d'où venez vous ?" sounds more neutral, especially if it is your first question to this person and you're not already engaged in a conversarion. "vous êtes qui ?" versus "qui êtes-vous ?": the first one feels like you are implying something along the lines of "who do you think you are?". This is a nuance and some people may not feel it, but others will.

I've lived here for 3 years and have only just found this out 😂 This is the thing that confuses me the most (inversion) so now I know it's not even necessary I might actually be able to learn more than 5 phrases! I just found your channel so will be trying to watch a clip everyday thank you!

So how would you say can I - puis-je. Since that is an inversion??

Je suis américain et il y a au moins un an depuis j’étais capable de parler en français. Quelquefois je doute mes capacités de parler en français parce il y a personne qui parle français proche à moi aux États-Unis, mais j’aime votre chaîne parce que je peux me rappeler la structure du grammaire et je peux être à jour à l’égard du français quotidien ! Merci de publier toutes vos vidéos !

I'm so glad I found this video. I've been speaking French for over 13 years (mostly at school) and never once learned that inversions are super "frowned upon" in spoken french. I've only been speaking regularly with native French speakers for a couple of months, but hopefully this will enhance my conversations. Thank you so much!

So it's not so much an out dated language issue, as it is a class issue. I will stick to formal French then. But I like the fact that I can speak proper English and "street" English, so I want to do so in French, as well. Thanks for the upload!

If you're meeting someone for the first time and you're using "vous," would the "tu t'appelles comment" then become "vous vous-appellez comment?"

On the historic side, the "ne" is often omitted in informal conversation nowadays but it is the real word of negation (coming from Latin non). The other word "pas" is the sole survivor of olden times, when people would add what they felt was the smallest element of what is not : "pas" was for going "Je n'avance pas", "I'm not getting (one step) forward". Another one you may know is "point" for seeing, though it feels dated: "Je n'y vois point", "I can't see (a spot)". All others than pas sound so funny to people today that we even mixed some up: "goutte" was for liquids (drinking, pouring, raining), but you might hear "on n'y vois goutte". Cheers!

Thanks for this informative video, I have been learning French for a while and was familiar will all the question forms that you described. However I had never heard that you don't tend to invert in spoken French. Yours was the only video I have seen to convey this. I will subscribe and look forward to looking back on your previous videos. Regards Julian, U.K.

Thanks for creating these videos. The fear for most beginners is sounding awkward and standing out when speaking. Learning to speak more naturally is always plus for me!

“That’s okay if you want to sound like Moliere...”. Awesome! New sub!

Having learned formal way in school, it doesn't sound fancy, but I get it.

I feel like a have a toolbox full of tools i can't use and i need to buy a whole new set. :( Thanks for making these videos, though. It makes a big difference having people spell this stuff out!

Your videos are really helpful. The term "street french" is cool.

wow, that was so useful. I never thought of it in that way. But yes, I know in my language is the same, formal and fancy way of speaking. Thank you for the great tips.

Here in Quebec I believe it can also be a question of context. Of course, Est-ce que is used very often, but when the inversion is shorter, we tend to use it. Eg.: As-tu eu le temps de ... would be used more often instead of Est-ce que tu as eu le temps de... . However we would say Quand est-ce que tu reviens... instead of Quand reviens-tu. If that makes sense.

So I stumbled on your channel, thank God, and I love it. weird but I actually like the inverted way lol. like Parlez vous. I haven't learned the stuff with the extra t. I dont like that. I think the french constructed the language to flow beautifully and the inverted way flows better off MY tongue. I' learning with Duolingo so your channel is a great asset to have. Time for me to switch it up. Keep up the great work. Bless

Fancy sounds cool tbh. I get socially awkward etc, just sounds so complete and beautiful

Great video. Thanks!

One thing that caught my eye, was that compared to the French girl that I was talking to (Elisa, from Nancy)...The girl in this video is not a "rotten not nice lady person". A refreshing contrast, if i do say so myself. I have Hope for the French !

In Indonesian language (I think, this also applies to most local languages in Indonesia), the structure of a sentence is S-V-O (subject-verb-object). There are no inversions. If we want to ask, we just add a question word at start or end of the sentence. For yes/no question, we just change intonation (spoken) or use question mark (written). For clarity (or in formal speech), we add "apa" or "apakah" that acts like 《 est-ce que 》 in French. This structure makes me (an Indonesian speaker) able to learn quicker about the structures of French sentences. Here are some examples. "Saya memakan nasi goreng." (formal) "Aku makan nasi goreng." (informal) 《 Je mange le riz frits. 》 "Saya memakan nasi goreng?" (formal) "Aku makan nasi goreng?" (informal) 《 Je mange le riz frits ? 》 "Apakah saya memakan nasi goreng?" (formal, clearer) "Saya memakan nasi gorengkah?" (variation) "Apa aku makan nasi goreng?" (informal, clearer) "Aku makan nasi gorengkah?" (variation) 《 Est-ce que je mange le riz frits ? 》 "Saya makan apa?" (formal) "Aku makan apa?" (informal) 《 Je mange quoi ? 》 "Saya makan di mana?" (formal) "Aku makan di mana?" (informal) 《 Je mange où ? 》 "Di mana saya makan?" (formal) "Di mana aku makan?" (informal) 《 Où je mange ? 》 "Kapan saya makan?" (formal) "Kapan aku makan?" (informal) 《 Quand je mange ? 》 "Bagaimana saya makan?" (formal) "Bagaimana aku makan?" (informal) 《 Comment je mange ? 》 Note that 《 je 》 can be translated as "saya" (formal), "aku" (informal), "daku" (poetic), and "hamba" (acting as servant). Nice video, by the way. Thanks for sharing!

Whenever I hear someone use inversions in France, I wonder if they're taking the piss tbh.

Thanks. Nice job laying out the differences. I actually thought the 3 forms were pretty much interchangeable.

Love this!! Uggh thank you so much for clarifying this. It never made scenes to me either & I got frustrated learning formal 😅

Omg tks for the tips, I've started to learn french 1 month ago, and basically i learned the formal form, just it

Awesome, great to see this video. I thought I was speaking like a child since I didn't learn to use inversions

I just came from two months in France. Your talking advanced French in this video but for the beginner it's very very basic and inversions are necessary because it was the only way I could communicate. It was clear from the beginning when I opened my mouth I wasn't from France and didn't know the language well, so basically people accepted this and didn't make an issue of it, but I used avez-vous, puis-je etc all the time. This is the danger in french textbooks they don't teach the short cuts and slang

Great content. Love your videos. Très utile 👏🏻😊

Very interesting and useful information. The vast majority of questions in English have some element of inversion - so maybe that's part of the misunderstanding.

Such an informative channel and the examples given are so useful and practical for people learning French or like me already know it but dont speak it anymore only because I dont live in France anymore however I,ve been traveling there for vacation . It is so helpful to know because you dont want to sound like a jerk speaking French .Thank you

nice video, I completely agree with all you said

This is a good example of the dumbing down of french. There is nothing complicated with inversions especially for an english speaking person. And it is a weird reason to give considering how much french people love to complicate things... As for fancy (or upper class) sounding, I must sound super fancy since I don't pepper my french with english words...

OMG I love your channel guys!! it made me realize french is not that complicated at all as I learned it at school. I´ve learned more in your 10-minute videos than in my 5 years at classes hahaha. ------------> Would you make a video explaining why "On" is used more often than "Nous"? Thanks!!!

I love you guys, it always feels like I'm sitting with my friends while watching you.

This is absolutely fascinating. I started to learn French in 1971 at the age of 6 in England, so I learned it quite formally. By the age of 19, my father had moved to France to work in Paris for 3 years (about 1984) and I also had a few French friends so also travelled in France and I spent some time in bars getting drunk with them. So, all of the French I actually learned when I visited France was was by direct contact and a few phrases that my dad taught me. I never realised that there was a difference - I just absorbed it. My dad taught me the less formal, "Vous acceptez la Carte Bleue?" (Do you take Visa cards) when in a supermarket - this was the 1980s, people paid with cash or checks with an identity card rather than credit/debit cards used by the English when in a supermarket, but my schoolboy French (taught to me by a French woman teacher who was born in the 1920s) would have been, "Acceptez-vous le carte bleue". I now understand why a French girlfriend used to find the construction of an English insult, but spoken in French, used to find so amusing. You can probably work it out. The insult was, "Go f**k yourself", and I used to use a formal French construction to translate it. No wonder she found it hillarious when I used it. I have a horrible feeling that the French that I use is a mixture of very old and very modern. I will be in the South of France in June 2023 - I will see if I can be less formal. Obviously, my French is now half a century old and because I don't get to practice it often, I must sound like an old man. I am now terrified how I must sound in Spanish and Portuguese with my rudimentary grasp of those two languages.

id like to see you both do a video where you explain why french fluent people who are learning english , are making certains types of mistakes certain way they(we) translate in our head to speak eng. or the way we contruc (wrongly) our sentences. lots of things french people are doing when speaking or learning english ?

Hey guys. Love the idea of y’all teaching day-to-day French! A constructive feedback from a new subscriber here: I’ve noticed the use of the word ‘awkward’ a lot in your approach. Why not to reinforce the positive by using ‘customary’ instead? It is customary to say....such, such...as opposed to ..’it’s awkward to say this or that’. As almost a multilingual person myself (with English being my 2nd,French 3rd & Italian 4th), I have found positive reinforcement crucial in building my confidence when learning/communicating in another language other than my native one. Keep up the good work!

6:50 What's the correct standard form? Est-ce qu'il parle français?? thanks for a helpful video 💕

Pick up the “dirty” French books at your local bookstore or get them online. They teach this concept (not only the cuss words 😉). Helped me a lot. Also talking to French and French Canadian people in the old school AOL SQL chat rooms definitely gets you practicing these forms.

Thanks for the useful video! Please check if the following are also outdated, and if so what should be used instead: 1. Quel est votre prénom, svp ? (a hotel receptionist asking a guest who is checking in) 2. Où se trouve la gare, svp ? (a travler asking a local resident) 3. Où est ta mère ? (a father asking his child) Also, how to answer the question "Est-ce que vous allez bien ?" if the situation is halfway between good and bad?

I feel so old! The way I learned to ask someone’s age was “Combien d’ans avez-vous?”, which always seemed like the most convoluted (and vague) way to ask that question

I read French language books 20 years ago and putting the “tu” or “vous” after the verb was what I learned. Seems like I have to unlearn it. I didn’t know it sounds fancy. Informal French is like English sentence structure of subject-verb-object.

Last year I spent several months taking french in Paris and they beat the inversion thing into us. Telling us that it is the better way!

So first I really enjoy this channel and wish there were more like it as conversational language is so much different from what you learn in any learning system really! Lol. Growing up near the Canadian border in New York we took French in high school and I heard it spoken often. Now don’t cringe, LOL I know that French-Canadian is much different than what you speak in France. But keep up the good work and thanks for all the useful info!

Excellent thank you!

As a native anglophone, I can see why people do inversions. As with English and even with what I’ve witnessed with Dutch, inversions happen all the time when we ask a question. It’s much more common to say something like “Are you studying for the test?” vs “You study/are studying for the test?”. So I think people do that as they think that it’s more fitting to say « Étudies-tu pour l’examen?» than to say « Tu étudies pour l’examen? ». Another thing to realize as well that those folks don’t realize is that the french example I provided isn’t in the present progressive, but the first example in English I provided is in the present progressive. When I took French in high school, the teacher never taught the inversions in french, so I never even thought that it could make grammatical sense to use inversions in French. I haven’t really encountered any present progressive in French, so I don’t know if that kind of thing exists in French. I know it does with Spanish and even some others. Btw, love this channel! This channel is a great chance for me to learn new things, as well as review French that I haven’t used too much since I was last in high school (almost 4 years ago). Bisous bisous! (Oui, je l’ai appris de Learn French with Alexa).

You guys are blowing my mind! Man, I always learned the inversion and it was the bane of my existence in school! So happy I can abandon it haha

Hi! thank you so much for your channel! Could you recommend some modern french tv shows or movies??

Au Québec, nous utilisons beaucoup les inversions. « Parles-tu français? » est une forme tout à fait normale et toutes les classes sociales l’utilisent, de même que « Est-ce que tu parles français? ». J’ignore si cette dernière forme est grammaticalement correcte, cependant.

bonne vidéo!- merci beaucoup!

Merci mille fois! C’est très utile.

Merci pour la vidéo, j’ai vraiment apprécié. J’ai besoin de parler plus comme un natif !

I was using "Parle vous , anglais". I should stop it immediately. I don't want to appear snobbish. 😃😃

Just so you know, I lived in Neuilly sur Seine while I went to university in Paris and they speak just like everyone else. I never heard an inversion . . . mdr . . . Great great video, like always.

Salut ! J'adore vos vidéos beaucoup ! 💕🇫🇷🥖

So helpful! the equation makes it easy

I was told early on that "puis-je" was being "precieuse" so that was an easy one to dispense with ;-)

J’ai hâte de montrer cette vidéo à mes élèves! Elle est super! Merci de l’avoir faite!

Watching this after seeing your latest insta post. Language changes? In high school my textbook was from the '80s and the "common" French names we had to chose from for class were ancient. I chose the name Huguette. Only like 90 year old women are named that anymore I think, lol.

Hello! I’m trying to learn French on my own. I am fully fluent in Spanish and of course I notice all the similarities in our Romance languages. I’m loving your videos as well. I would love it if you guys would include the English translations to what you’re saying in French by either translating what you’re saying or have it written down below the French words at the bottom of screen. Also, could you guys slow down a bit when speaking French please? You guys pronounce all the words/sentences way too fast for me to catch the pronunciations of each word. Thank you for your help!

Suppose we were asking, "Il vient à quelle heure?" In English I would put the "what time" at the front because that is the important thing: "What time is he coming?" From what we have learned in this video, it would sound overly-formal to say, "À quelle heure vient-il?" Is there any other way of putting the "`a quelle heure" at the front?

These videos are very, very good for an English speaker.

Bonjour! Any website that you would recommend to learn informal spoken french?

Merci beaucoup pour cette vidéo! I always wondered which structure to use and now it makes perfect sense. 😁 Also, when you talked about the formal way to speak I knew exactly what you meant. I would say someone who uses that structure is pretentious (another French word, lol 😉)

How do you drop the ne for verbs starting with a vowel? Thanks!

Can you do a video about quand vs lorsque?

In fact, English is much the same. We used to use a lot of inversion to ask questions (think about the old nursery rhyme, : "Baa, baa, Black Sheep, *have you* any wool?"). But we have retained inversion for auxiliary verbs only ("are you" sounds perfectly natural, or "do you" or "will you", but not "work you", etc.). I notice that this is sort of true also in French, because the generic question form "Est-ce que" is inversion ("Est-ce" is the inversion of "C'est"). Are there any other verbs in French that are still commonly inverted in spoken language, or is "Est-ce" the only one?

Merci beaucoup!

Super..et aussi c'est beaucoup plus facile pour nous (les anglais)de poser une question comme ça, d'utiliser 'on' et tout ça... Mais vous avez raison, les profs ici enseignent encore le vieux façon. merci pour vos leçons.

Your vlogs really helps for a beginner like me. You guys are awesome. New subscriber here.

One inversion I've heard frequently in spoken french is "comment vas-tu?". Do you think this phrase is also a bit "fancier" than the standard "comment ça va?" and should be avoided in more laid back settings, or is this specific phrase more common and an exception?

Very good I have been trying to pick up French the way you explain is better

Merci pour une bonne nouvelle, en fait ces questions sont plus facile :-)

It's funny because I learned only years afterwards that inversions were not used often, but it was never stated that it would be looked at so awkwardly lol.

Wow nice to know, I've been using the inversion style questions lol

Theoretically, by using est-ce que, don't you resolve it by putting a mini-inversion at the beginning of the sentence?