and why does french people use «this» but not "this"
#what is the difference between "Ce" , "Cette" and "Ça"?
neat thunder
quiet marten
- Ce/cet/cette/ces is a demonstrative adjective used before the noun you want to point to.
Ce stylo, cet arc, cette voiture, ces boîtes.
- Ce is also a demonstrative pronoun used to replace the thing you want to refer to. It's usually used before the verb être.
- There is ceci and cela as demonstrative pronouns. Ceci is used when something is near you and cela when it's far from you. But in practical French, distances aren't really important unless you want to compare two things. By the way, you can also note distances with the adjectives mentioned above along with -ci and -là (ce livre-ci, cette porte-là).
- That's where ça comes in, again as a demonstrative pronoun. It's used in casual French. It doesn't indicate the distance at all as it isn't very important in French as I said unlike in English.
- The pronoun ce is only used as a subject (and in set expressions) unlike ceci/cela/ça which can be in both subject and object positions. "C'est" (ce+est), "ça fait froid", "j'ai fait cela", etc.
Here are a few links for you:
Demonstrative adjectives: https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/demonstrative-adjectives/
Demonstrative pronouns: https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/indefinite-demonstrative-pronouns/
lofty ferry
and why does french people use «this» but not "this"
Both quotation marks are used in French. «» is the main one and "" is for a citation within a citation. Although you might see internet users using "" more because it's easier to type on an AZERTY keyboard.
As for why, it's just the standard that caught on. Some French authors thought that "" would be confused for regular punctuation. Or that it looked uglier.