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.
Read more about this topic: Elision (French)
Famous quotes containing the words informal and/or french:
“We are now a nation of people in daily contact with strangers. Thanks to mass transportation, school administrators and teachers often live many miles from the neighborhood schoolhouse. They are no longer in daily informal contact with parents, ministers, and other institution leaders . . . [and are] no longer a natural extension of parental authority.”
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