Elision (French) - Informal French

Informal French

Elision of the second-person singular subject pronoun tu, before the verbs avoir "to have" and être "to be", is very common in informal speech, but is avoided in careful speech and never used in formal writing:

  • Tu as décidé de lui rendre visite, tu es allé voir le film, tu n'étais pas là. ("You decided to visit him/her, you went to see the film, you were not there" in careful speech)
  • T'as décidé de lui rendre visite, t'es allé voir le film, t'étais pas là. (In informal speech.)

Note in the third example that the particle of negation ne has been dropped as well, a typical feature of casual speech.

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