okiteiru_

[lament moth]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

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Make it descriptive, including relevant context, but also to the point. This way you improve your chances of getting a more relevant and specific answer.

[blissful hazel]

i understand the point of the phase is to do something to the effect of transforming a statement into a question

but i've seen it being used when that's not necessary

for example in: est-ce que je peux avoir . . .?

to me "can i have..." can never be mistaken as a statement

so is there some rule for the phases use?

[reef ember]

it uses the same word order as a statement, though.
"je peux avoir le sel ?" (Can I have the salt?)
"je peux avoir le sel." (I can have the salt)

[blissful hazel]

oh

[reef ember]

though, in addition to making it clear it's a question, it also comes off as less informal. Inversion is really formal and quite unnatural to use in your everyday life, but sometimes you wanna be just a little more civil. "est-ce que" is technically inversion, but in practice it's more like a tool to be more polite while avoiding using the overly formal inversion

[blissful hazel]

right yeah so its a more

standard way of saying it

that isnt totally formal or informal

[reef ember]

yeah

[blissful hazel]

i cant get behind that the same order of words puts those words in different places

[reef ember]

well it only changes if you translate to English
because English naturally uses inversion for questions
that's a translation quirk of two languages not working the same way, not a French quirk

[blissful hazel]

so french only uses inversion if formal

otherwise its the same order

[reef ember]

for informal questions, you can use the same word order in affirmative and interrogative sentences

[blissful hazel]

thats damn complicated coming from a germanic language

does this also work with vous avez?

i might be misinterpreting this but

[ornate tiger]

Fwiw, we absolutely do questions without inversion in English.

"You ate WHAT?"
"You spent HOW MUCH?"
"He left her for a younger woman?"

Generally gives the question more of a shock factor, which it doesn't in French, but it's not uncommon by any means

[blissful hazel]

correct me if any of this is wrong and i might get the filler word wrong sorry

vous avez du wifi (you have the wifi)
est-ce que vous avez du wifi? (do you have the wifi?)
do you need to invert vous avez to avez-vous for have you or can you say:
est-ce que vous avez écouté indila?

[blissful hazel]

oh true

[steel estuary]

We do?

[ornate tiger]

We does.

[steel estuary]

You don't say?

[blissful hazel]

i does say

[reef ember]

shoo shoo

[ornate tiger]

Fo' shizzle, I dizzle

[steel estuary]

Your sentences are perfect btw!

[blissful hazel]

happy

[steel estuary]

You're happy? I'm happy

[ornate tiger]

The three different types of questions can happen with any nouns/pronouns combined with verbs
The formality of certain pronouns might mean that some combinations are more common, but they're not intertwined

[reef ember]

same thing as other questions, you can frame them 3 ways:
vous avez écouté indila? (intonation)
est-ce que vous avez écouté indila? (est-ce que)
avez-vous écouté indila? (inversion)
they all translate to the same "have you listened to Indila?" in English, albeit with various levels of formality

[blissful hazel]

so its just formality

god damn ok

[ornate tiger]

although I guess I should specify that inversion in questions can only happen with pronouns, if there's a regular noun, the pronoun gets added

John, a-t-il mangé les gâteaux ?
and not
*A John mangé les gâteaux ?

[steel estuary]

There are pretty much two French languages, formal and informal. In some ways more different as Euro French can be from Qc French

[blissful hazel]

yeah i think formal vs informal will be the biggest pain for me to learn especially with formal using inversion and informal not

i would be more likely to use inversion because English does

thanks for the help

[torpid quartz]

3

[steel estuary]

hm?

[torpid quartz]

soutenu, courant, familier

automobile, voiture, caisse

inversion, est-ce que, intonation

[steel estuary]

je parlais pas des registres en particulier, juste de la fracture/diglossie entre la langue soutenue et la langue familière

[torpid quartz]

ben c des registres non ?

[steel estuary]

toutes les langues ont des registres, mais toutes les langues n'en font pas deux réalités parallèles comme nous

the diglossic approach to intra-speaker grammatical variation (Ferguson 1959), wherein speaker-hearers acquire two grammars which are socio-stylistically distinct – one H(igh), the other L(ow) – but linguistically related (to the extent that users regard them as the same language), and then engage one or other of them (but do not mix them) in their active productions

[serene vale]

voiture, auto, char