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French native here. This can get worse. Because we often skip also the negative « ne » : « il ne faut pas… » (there shouldn’t…) is most of the time spoken « il faut pas… » and as said in the video, you can get rid of « il » also, so just « ‘faut pas ». With the « avoir » verb that gives you instead of « il n’y a pas » -> « il y a pas » -> « y’a pas ». But nobody says « n’y a pas »…

As a French native speaker I just realised that I am always dropping the "il" of "il y a" when speaking. It really sounds weird if I try to pronounce it. Expect when singing the song "il y a le ciel, le soleil et la mer", where the "il" is really part of the melody and you can't drop it.😅

I legit just thought I'm stupid and deaf

Helping us with these extreme shortcuts taken by the French is so deeply appreciated! They, themselves, are hardly even aware of them, so they forget to tell us!

Une autre astuce : la phrase "de toutes facons" est souvent prononcée "toutes façons", ou même "t'façons". (un exemple se trouve dans le deuxième extrait.)

Well to be honest there's actually an "il" in the first and third examples. Or more of an L'y a. And the thing you don't take into consideration is the social context. When you're a person with a charge in society in France and if you speak good french you pronounce more clearly than if you're just some dude in the street. In France the social context really matters and sometimes they're so distinguished that people from one groupe doesn't even know others exist.

Actually when you're French, you can even ear the difference when someone is saying "Y'a" or "L'y'a" because your can ear a different sound when the mouth start moving forming a phantom L or directly with the Y. But learning the french way of making words disappear in everyday spoken French it's a long time adventure I guess. XD Sorry about that btw, and good luck ^^'

In some formal contexts the "Il" is prononces as it's written, for exemple for a speech, for a professional meeting or when the subject is very touchy and you have to be focused to don't use a wrong word or sentence

Fascinating. I had a really hard time hearing the sounds in the clips, but when you broke them down and pronounced them, I began to hear them.

Wow.. That helped a lot cause I've been trying to learn for 3 months and I had no clue. Literally thought I couldn't hear well. Thanks man, keep up the good work!!

Just to echo some of what has been said, I would suggest that this is very helpful for understanding spoken French, but should be avoided as advice for speaking. I say this as someone who learned Spanish. Now I speak more or less fluently I find myself cutting corners in much the same way as native speakers. Not because I learned the pronunciation that way, but because of the natural confidence and familiarity that comes with fluency. I don't think this should be rushed: you have to learn the rules to break them and other such clichés.

Hey Alex! Your dedication to French over the past decade is truly impressive! It would be great if you could share some insights into the challenges-those dead ends, frustrations, and plateaus that we all encounter along the way. Reflecting on my own journey, I reached what I thought was a pretty advanced level, even diving into Camus translations at C1. However, I hit a stumbling block with seemingly simple expressions like 'Ça y est.' I really appreciate your focused approach, honing in on one expression for a deeper understanding. Your guidance is invaluable, and I'm wondering if you might also share some of your own learning struggles in addition to your fantastic French teaching videos. It could add another layer of connection for us learners. Thanks a bunch! p.s. I had a subscription to LingoPie and it was very helpful. One video in particular I remember well, a tour of Notre Dame was fantastic.

Your videos are smart and always to the point. I'd make a small observation though. You're right when it comes to understanding French people speaking fast, and all too often with very little respect for their own language. But as far as speaking is concerned, i think it is a different story. There is no problem at all with saying "il n'y a personne à la maison" or "il y aura Victor et Michèle au dîner" or "il y a des années que je ne suis pas allé en Angleterre..." My point is you can't be wrong when pronouncing properly a French expression native speakers tend to slaughter. On the other hand, it may be risky to try to imitate peoples bad linguistic manners...

Une super leçon ! Merci Alex. 🇫🇷😽🇫🇷

I did French at school a very long time ago, but I couldn't hear it even when you pointed it out and slowed it down!

Thank you Alex for this video! After a few weeks of living in Bordeaux and taking classes , we are seeing progress in some comprehension of spoken french in our daily life. We love these kind of videos to help us feel at ease that we are not alone in the difficulty of understand spoken french. January we go to Montpellier to see if that city could be a future home base! Love BDX but the cold and rain has us considering Montpellier. Cheers!

i'm french and i confirm that we never say Il y a we just say YA and sometimes so fast that it almost sounds as if we're not saying anything !

This was really “ear-opening” 👏👏👏

same for "il se peut ". Il se peut qu'il pleuve ce soir -> it might rain tonight the french will say " y's'peut qu'il pleuve ce soir"

Needed this! Loving the videos!

Cheers for this… much appreciated 👍👍👍

Spoken French has been a challenge for me in the past several years therefore I find videos like this extremely useful. Textbooks usually don't deal with these forms and having someone examine them for you is a huge boost. I need to understand those spoken forms asap. They are everywhere and I need them. That said, I simply refuse to use them myself (like I don't in English, by the way). When I do, I feel I am being shabby and inarticulate. I prefer to stick to the "proper" language which is, after all, the language I fell in love with.

Dans le premier exemple, je ne suis même pas sûr d'entendre "Y'a eu", c'est peut-être juste "Y'eu".

I quit studying French a year ago because I couldn't understand what anyone was saying. Educators were talking about "comprehensible input", but the input I was receiving wasn't comprehensible. The reason was because we are taught to speak written French and, therefore, can't understand spoken French. Written French and spoken French are two different languages. I know of no training program that is built upon the systematic comprehension of spoken French.

En plus de cette excellente leçon, je me permets d'ajouter que, dans le 2e clip : _"Puis, de toutes façons..."_ est prononcé : pi t'fasson ( et peut se transcrire : pis d'tout'façons ).

Very helpful. Thank you!

This is so fascinating, I had heard these contractions many times but somehow never linked it up to my own speaking, I always just tried to say the whole thing, including "il" really fast, because I thought it was just me being slow in my speaking

When the audio played normally I couldn’t even hear the y’aura, y’a etc. I could only hear it when you went back and forth with the audio which helped me listen out for it when it went back to normal speed. I plan on studying french again

Soooooooo important! Thanks!!!

THANK YOU!!!!!

Les contractions sont vraiment importantes et d’ailleurs, c’est ce qui forme la base de l’accent du Québec. It’s nice to see examples from France too, they do it less often, but witnessing this evolution makes me happy. Written French changes at a slower pace too, which is good to me. It keeps us all in check remembering the rules. Excellent vidéo 😊

If I can add something, french has different style of speaking based on "where" you are, like speaking with friends or at work. Same for writing, we have different "niveau de langue". (like how Victor HUGO would write.. you can use "language soutenu" where your sentences are more complexe... or a more familiar language with friends..) (There are : REGISTRE POPULAIRE (lower one) - REGISTRE FAMILIER (the one we use everyday) - REGISTRE NEUTRE (with people we don't know) - REGISTRE SOUTENU (when you write or you want to be more polite or speak with your mother whom is also a duchess..) At Work you tend to use a more formal way of speaking when speaking with higher ups (not always for sure..) Also French people can tell if you learned French with friends or with with a professor because of how you speak and what kind of words you are using.. same for the area you come from (if you are french). Like does this kid use complexe words or does he use argot (slang from Paris)

For me if you say il y’aura It comes out as y’aura But you know your il is not possible to hear but is there!

I feel like Basil Fawlty when explaining why he couldn’t understand Manuel, “I learned *classical* Spanish not the strange dialect he seems to have picked up.”

‘You can never get too much repetition’. Afraid so, as this perfectly proves.

No-one likes to say that French is hard, but it is. The disconnect between spoken and written French is massive and a lot of French language instruction is dumbed down to the point that it effectively teaches spoken French wrong. And, yes, English speakers are often challenged with spelling, but looking at comment pages on the Internet, it's clear a lot of native French speakers have a similar difficulty going from spoken French to getting the written form correct.

0:15 the vowels in between words slide into eachother, like in greek

A big one yes!

I'm French Canadian native and personally when I write online I very very often just write " Y'a " instead of "il y a". Sometimes my mom will correct me , and I tell her That I just don't care , you know what I mean. "Y'a une faute d'orthographe dans cette phrase , mais je m'en fou." There is a ton of stuff in French that is not pronounced .

French is one of those languages where context is everything since it’s full of homophone words, and french and francophone people don’t pronounce most of each word ending. This is very peculiar as a neolatin language where normally the full word is pronounced. If you learn how to write French, your speaking will come faster afterwards, while adjusting sounds and pronunciation shortcuts.

Fun fact for me - I arrived in Montreal from Australia in the 80s, just as the slogan 'Coke is it!' was being launched in North America. I hadn't seen it in English in western Canada, so when I got to Montreal I was confronted with a billboard that said 'Y a Coke!' What did this mean, I wondered: 'There is Coke!'? It wasn't till I got to Newfoundland that I saw it in English.

I can't imagine what it's like being a french dyslexic!

Bien utile!! Merci ☺

Sometimes, we pronounce also "i y"aura"... With "i y" like a diphthong.

Thanks!

Ce n'est pas que c'est prononcé différemment de ce qui est écrit, c'est juste que dans le language parlé, non officiel, on omet le Il et cela donne "Y'a eu", "Y'aura", et que ce n'est pas correct de l'écrire ainsi dans des textes (sous-titres etc)

The first example sounds like "il que" to my ears.

"L" in "il" is never said basically... It's "i" or "y" by now (or "ils" can also be "iz").

Honestly, in the first example with the woman speaking, I clearly heard the "il", but the "y a" disappeared. The man in the car spoke mumbled mush.

The last clip drops the "u" in "tu" as well. But that's not hard to hear, unlike "y a."

Been here 8 years. At a medical yesterday, the doctor complained about my lack of French. I wish I could have shown him this.

Pi t'façon y'aura d'autres occasions sur la route :)

Okay, so thirty years have passed since I lived in France and I DID live where language change was more conservative. We learned it as if it ware written gla, glauras/-aît, gla su. So thirty years down the road, it shouldn't be surprising that 'il' has fallen entirely out of 'il y a' and similarly common phrase-initial structures. More than likely, it was already true of many dialects, including many on TV, back then. And 'ne' disappeared all the time in speech, especially when an accompanying partner word remained, e.g. 'personne' or 'jamais,' which were hardly ever used any longer as their original selves, 'person' or '(n)ever.' This is the trouble with never conversing in French anymore: I don't get any clue or practice with changes in the language. Small wonder it's gotten harder, not easier, to follow movie dialog.

What I've noticed is that even though il y a is often written as y a in informal French, the first i is still pronounced. So, a more accurate representation would be i y a.

I am a native French speaker. If I may let an advice, I would suggest, as in any language, to listen to someone who speaks it well. (In case you wonder, French movies are often far from it. In Canada (as French speakers), we sometimes struggle to comprehend them...) Audio books have more chances to present a distinct language.

As a French, yep

There was a mix up. Either you drop the pronoun IL entirely and say "y aura" (no apostrophe) or you elide the final L and you could spell it "i'y aura" (and this one is my native pronunciation, BTW). But never mix these two with each other. Why ? Because the apostrophe is a sign of elision, and there is no elided letter between "y" and "aura".

Hi, native french speaker here ! Do you have questions about some spoken contractions you'd like to ask that weren't in the video ? Maybe u can help a little ^^ Also, keep going, we know our language isn't the easiest for sure :')

I’ve been learning French since covid and can happily say I read and talk (with some errors of course) but comprehension is still something I struggle with because of what you outline here in this video. I hear different sounds then struggle to think of what they may be talking about.

Merci Alex, je suis niveau B2 mais je comprends pas du tout le français oral.

btw, I just watched the video on Lingopie and not sure why but I do hear she saying "il y a". though the pronunciation is diferent. Rather "I- ly-a" like is commonly said. it sounds more like "il-y-a". there is no "ly" sound.

I did hear the il part and not the later part on first hearing

6:56 ad ends

thanks for the video. Its very helpful

You're definitely aspirating the k in qu'i y a personne. French doesn't normally aspirate P, K or T. As a native Finnish speaker, I had to learn to aspirate my K, P & T when speaking English. At some point, I started aspirating them in Finnish, too. So, I had to learn to control the aspiration. Now, I correctly aspirate the stops in English, but don't aspirate them in Finnish or the Romance languages that I speak. P.S. It could also be your microphone playing tricks on you. So, you may not actually be aspirating your Ks, but it's worth paying attention to the aspiration.

Nooo don't tell the world our secrets!!! good to note though that you can write French closer to how it's actually spoken. People commonly tend to write in somewhat "academically correct French" by default, but in some context you also encounter writings that try to specifically imply a specific pronunciation. Typically, when people text, they might actually write "ya", or apostrophe-out unpronounced vowels and whatnot. Kinda similar to how in English people often write "kind of" or "want to" formally but actually pronounce and informally write "kinda" and "wanna".

Thank you!

Very interesting. French is substantially different to the untrained ear when heard in an everyday (commonly spoken) context, vs its written, grammatically correct form. Especially in French films or TV series, where nervy, emotionally driven characters blabber in what may sound like an incoherent hodgepodge. American films and series display the same faults: whether the characters are from Atlanta, New-York or LA, they adopt a low/middle class, heavily accented parlance that will sound ‘authentic’ but will may make the uninitiated flinch. Also, it should be emphasized that parisian French is substantially different from how it will sound in the rest of France, where it is slower, more clearly articulated, with a singing lilt, accompanied by expressive facial expressions: very different from the rapid-fire delivery and poker-faced, impatient and/or indifferent faces of the locals. I vividly recall trying to find my way in downtown Toulouse in 2017 (about 1M people, home to the Airbus aerocomplex: similar to the Seattle-Boeing one): a brigade of the local gendarmerie guarded the Place du Capitole (the town’s main square in historical Toulouse). I asked my way to the nearest gendarme. He placed a hand on my shoulder and accompanied me to the centre of the square, pointing to all the different avenues and points of interest. I’m French-speaking from Québec and although our accents were different, the kinship was strong and genuine. No need to make huge efforts to understand one another. I had to replay the video’s extracts multiple times just to make sure I understood the lines. I’m sure Parisians would do the same with Québec films or series: pause, replay and listen intently - then laugh 😉.

More like this!!! 👍

Bravo Alex pour vos vidéos très bien faites et instructives. Pour moi une des difficultés vient du fait que le débit du français parlé à Paris est hyper rapide, les voyelles très serrées, les consonnes fusionnées entre elles, le rythme saccadé...comparé à la façon plus relâchée et plus articulée que nous avons en Lorraine, par exemple, les Belges et les Suisses parlent également plus lentement que les Parisiens. Souvent je suis obligé de mettre les sous-titres (en français) pour pouvoir tout comprendre des dialogues d'un film français. C'est un comble.😀 On n'a jamais fini d'apprendre une langue, et de l'oublier...😟

the only thing I picked up was il y a.

A lot of the same kind of things happen in the Nordic languages. Danish is notorious for it, but Swedish and Norwegian do it too and often in less systematic ways.

I speak French as a second language (first language: American English) but don't understand other people's spoken French worth shit. Unlike native French speakers, I don't drop or elide over short words or syllables, instead choosing to enunciate everything clearly. "Il y a eu" comes out as four distinct syllables. I wonder what native speakers think about this. Since I already don't make the sounds of French like a native (my rhythm/intonation and some consonant sounds absolutely do not sound French), surely this only further gives my speech a non-native feel.

Is it weird that I can hear the il during the first clip??

Спасибо!

I'm french... And I just realized why I speak the way I speak 😭😂

I have a problem. I always hear the "i-y" sound. Even in these clips?! So either you are deaf, or I'm hearing something that isn't there...??

2:33 tbh that doesn't even sound like "ya" it sounds like "ioeu"

2:38 it sounds to me like she is saying IL and leaving out y a, not the other way around?!

She didn't just drop the il. She said sg like ee-ü. As for the second clip, I don't even try to understand.

Hey Alex! French speaker here. This is absolutely correct and is important to teach, but unfortunately your first exemple isn't a great one, because that one really is just pronounced fast. The "il" is there, just very fast and faint. The other ones are perfect.

As a French native, I can tell that trying to pronounce IL Y A un its entirety is exhausting and doesn't sound natural

What's the point of the listening game at the beginning when the answer is fully spoiled by the thumbnail of the video ? You're saying "I'll be impressed if you got it" but there is nothing to get, the answer was already given. 😅

I hear il but not the y a...? Il eu Is what i hear even slowed down

it doesn't sound at all like 'ya eu' to me, rather something like 'eem'. am i the only person hearing an 'm' sound in there?

As a Belgian I speak French always like this and never thought it would be insane to understand for non-native speakers. 😮

Juste au moment où tu penses faire des progrès! 🥹😭😭😭😭😂😂😂

Facile: Ya ka ! Ou ya pu ka !

French going through three forms of IL Y A: *sunny* Russians going through three forms of ILYA: *dark*

I heard "you", noy "ya ou". I do have some hearing loss. Am i wrong?

They speak Hackney French.

I can't hear the y'a at all. I hear il guelg... and I have listened loads of times.

Combo: « y’en a plus » instead of « il n’y en a plus »

Ptdr j'avais jamais pensé à ça mais quel enfer ça doit etre de comprendre à l'oral, avec il y a, mais aussi "je suis" qui devient "chui" je te qui devient "ch'te" etc Force à vous pour apprendre le français, on n'est pas ensemble

It's not really different from English language: "There has been some problems with your school" Becomes " 'Has been some problems with your school" The initial pronoun is "swallowed". Just it's probably a lot more common in spoken French.

... that happens with all languages ... so ...

Honestly what is the point of having a written language that doesn’t resemble spoken language at all?

😄🇫🇷 Francophone people: "Life is too short to pronounce every letter."

This is the hardest part about studying two romance languages. Sounds from contracted french often sound like legit spanish words. "Yora" sounds like "llora". This happens to me a lot in trying to understand spoken french. The spanish button in my brain starts flashing and I can't concentrate on the rest of the sentence. 🤪😵‍💫 Wish there was a switch on my skull that could flip the brain from one language to the other.