#razzmatazz2000

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

dreamy urchinBOT
high kiln
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inversion in France French is very formal, it's not used in colloquial language

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Québec French uses it quite a lot in all registers though

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there are a couple differences but overall yeah

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orally you could address, say, your boss without inversion, but in an email it might be more appropriate to use it

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you'll get used to the exact usage with time though, not to worry!

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I can't speak for Québécois, I just know it rarely sounds off to use it there, whereas in France* you can't put it everywhere without raising eyebrows haha

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you're welcome!

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yeah, I mentioned Québécois because that's the only Canado-American dialect I know anything about, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were a crossdialectal feature there :)

trim patio
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Metropolitan french hates inversion in informal speech . "est-ce que" is very common though. It technically is an inversion, but isn't considered as such by natives, even more so it is like a single word that helps avoiding inversion.
Let's say for instance you want the interrogative form for "tu manges tes frites". It would be "manges-tu tes frites ?", but you want to avoid inversion so instead you just put "est-ce que" before the base sentence : "est-ce que tu manges tes frites ?"

sullen arrow
high kiln
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yes of course

arctic otter
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Just to be pointed out that québécois -tu isn't inversion
I think it's generally more acceptable here but again it comes with context

sullen arrow
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quebec French has a question particle "-tu"

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etymologically it comes from "t-il" which is a form of question inversion, but nowadays it's been grammaticalized as a question marker

wispy thunder
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in the 'business' / government french course I'm taking in Canada, they want us to use the more formal inversion, or signifiers of question, not the tonal.... at the beginning of the course it was accepted, but now it is frowned upon.

ashen oak
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