Learn three different ways you can ask a yes-no question
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Intro |
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| Virginie: Bonjour, everyone! Hello, this is Virginie! And I'm here with Eric. |
| Eric: Hello! How Many Times Do I Have to Ask You This Question in French? |
| Virginie: So Eric, what are we looking today? |
| Eric: Sarah is going back to her place in Toulouse and Rob is picking her up at the hotel to help with her bags. Wow, what a gentleman. |
| Virginie: Yes, he's really a sweet gentleman. Now, what is important in our conversation today is that Sarah is in the bathroom and Rob is in the bedroom. So she can't hear him very well and that's why she is asking him to repeat. |
| Eric: Let's have a listen. |
Lesson conversation |
| Rob: Est-ce que tu as le billet de train? |
| Sarah: Comment? |
| Rob: Tu as le billet de train? |
| Sarah: Quoi? |
| Rob: As-tu le billet de train? |
| (Sarah sort de la salle de bain.) |
| Sarah: Ahh! Oui. |
| Rob: Tu es en retard, vite! |
| Eric: One more time with the translation. |
| Rob: Est-ce que tu as le billet de train? |
| Eric: Do you have the train ticket? |
| Sarah: Comment? |
| Virginie: What was that? |
| Rob: Tu as le billet de train? |
| Eric: Do you have your train ticket? |
| Sarah: Quoi? |
| Virginie: What? |
| Rob: As-tu le billet de train? |
| Eric: Do you have your train ticket? |
| (Sarah sort de la salle de bain.) |
| (Sarah gets out of the bathroom.) |
| Sarah: Ahh! Oui. |
| Virginie: Oh! Yes, I do. |
| Rob: Tu es en retard, vite! |
| Eric: You are late, quick! |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Virginie: So Sarah is going to take the train. |
| Eric: So it looks like maybe she's doing the voyage you did Virginie from Paris to Toulouse. |
| Virginie: Yes. I used to do that all the time when I was studying in Paris. True. |
| Eric: Did you take the really quick trains, the TGV? |
| Virginie: Oh yes, I used to take the TGV. Not all the time but between Paris and Toulouse, yeah, you can take the TGV. |
| Eric: What does TGV stand for? |
| Virginie: It's Train à Grande Vitesse. |
| Eric: So literally trains of great speed. |
| Virginie: Yes. |
| Eric: What were they like? |
| Virginie: Well, they were very comfortable. A little more expensive than the regular train. |
| Eric: But you get there faster. |
| Virginie: Yes, exactly. And the really interesting thing is that you can pick when you make your reservation online, you can pick whether you're going to be in a quiet car or whether you're going to be in a energetic car. |
| Eric: Wow! So what's the difference? |
| Virginie: Well, the quiet car, cell phones are not allowed, kids are not allowed and in the energetic car, they have kids, they have cell phones or you can music and everything. It's more like for young people. |
| Eric: It's like a real party car. |
| Virginie: Yeah, exactly. |
| Eric: Amazing. |
| Virginie: It's really funny. |
| Eric: Well, it's sort of practical though because I guess if you want to have a long sleep, if you want to have a long nap on the train. It's better to have the… |
| Virginie: The option. |
| Eric: Right. |
| Virginie: Definitely. Also what is great about the French railway system is that it gets you everywhere. |
| Eric: I was actually looking at the website also. They have a lot of specials in August, don't they? If you happen to be in France, you can go away on vacation. |
| Virginie: Oh yeah. You should definitely check the websites. |
| Eric: Beat out 20 year olds, you can go from Paris to Marseilles or somewhere else. |
| Virginie: Yeah, that's great. Summer vacation on the train. |
| Eric: That's how Virginie passes her vacations. |
| Virginie: All right. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Eric: So let's have a look at some of the vocabulary. |
| Virginie: Un billet de train. |
| Eric: A train ticket |
| Virginie: Un billet de train, un billet de train. |
| Eric: Then? |
| Virginie: Comment? |
| Eric: What? What was that? |
| Virginie: Comment? Comment? |
| Eric: Okay. |
| Virginie: Quoi? |
| Eric: What? |
| Virginie: Quoi? Quoi? |
| Eric: Okay. |
| Virginie: En retard. |
| Eric: Late. |
| Virginie: En retard, en retard. |
| Eric: All right. |
| Virginie: Vite. |
| Eric: Quickly, fast. |
| Virginie: Vite, vite. |
| KEY VOCABULARY AND PHRASES |
| Eric: And so the first word we're going to be looking at is… |
| Virginie: Billet de train. |
| Eric: Which is train ticket. |
| Virginie: Billet is ""ticket"" and train is ""train."" |
| Eric: Excellent. What about the little ""de"" in between them. |
| Virginie: Yes, oui. Yes, I forgot. It's very important. The little ""de"" links the two nouns, billet and train. |
| Eric: So what we say in English ""train ticket,"" they're saying like, ""ticket of the train."" |
| Virginie: Yes and that's what ""de"" stands for, it's ""of."" |
| Eric: So train is the compliment of the noun, right? |
| Virginie: Yeah, the complement of the noun, so here, ""train"" specifies what kind of ticket it is. |
| Eric: For example, if want to say ""a plane ticket,"" what do we say? |
| Virginie: We would say ""un billet d'avion."" |
| Eric: And also note that the ""e"" dropped here, so which have a d' because avion begins with an a. |
| Virginie: Exactly. So once again it's ""un billet d'avion."" |
| Eric: Let's move on to the words ""comment and quoi."" |
| Virginie: As we said before Sarah can't hear Rob so she's asking him to repeat what he said. And she uses first, ""comment?"" |
| Eric: And in this case ""comment"" doesn't mean ""how"" it means ""what."" |
| Virginie: Yeah, or ""what was that?"" And then she says, ""quoi."" |
| Eric: Which also means ""what?"" |
| Virginie: These are two ways to ask someone to repeat and just say, ""What was that?"" |
| Eric: Right. But ""comment"" is a little bit more polite. |
| Virginie: Yes. You don't want to say ""quoi"" too much. ""Quoi"" is really like, ""quoi"" like you're, ""what"" you're in a bad mood or something. ""Comment"" is more polite. |
| Eric: Okay. So let's take a look at some grammar. |
Lesson focus |
| Virginie: Our focus today is the three types of closed questions. |
| Eric: Closed question. Now what is a closed question? |
| Virginie: It's a question to which you answer with either yes or no. Oui or no, that's it. |
| Eric: Okay. So let's see what happens in our dialogue. |
| Virginie: Oui. Rob wants to know if Sarah has her train ticket with her. |
| Eric: Yeah. He asked three times. He REALLY wants to know. |
| Virginie: Yes. So each time he repeats his questions, he uses a different way of asking it. |
| Eric: So his first question is… |
| Virginie: Est-ce que tu as le billet de train? |
| Eric: And let's break this down. |
| Virginie: Est-ce que. |
| Eric: And that indicates this is a question being posed. |
| Virginie: Que as. |
| Eric: You have. |
| Virginie: Le billet de train. |
| Eric: The train ticket. Est-ce que tu as le billet de train? |
| Virginie: Est-ce que, the little thing at the beginning of the question is literally ""is that?"" |
| Eric: You can put this in front of most statements and turn them into a question. |
| Virginie: Now, our question starts with ""est-ce que,"" and then it's followed by the subject and the verb. And this is going to be how to build your question. |
| Eric: Exactly. Great. So now what about the second way of asking a question. |
| Virginie: So Rob then says, ""Tu as le billet de train."" |
| Eric: And that again means, ""Do you have the train ticket?"" |
| Virginie: Well, you have seen this type of question in previous lessons but let's talk about it a little more. |
| Eric: For example, remember, Sarah asked Rob, ""Vous etes etduiant?"" |
| Virginie: Yeah. And that was back when they first met in the museum. ""Vous etes etduiant?"" ""Are you a student?"" That's exactly the same type of question. |
| Eric: This is one of the most common type of closed questions. |
| Virginie: Yes, and again, the structure is first, the subject. |
| Eric: Here it's, ""tu,"" ""you."" |
| Virginie: Yes, and then the verb. |
| Eric: Here it's, ""as,"" ""have."" |
| Virginie: And then the complement. |
| Eric: Le billet de train. |
| Virginie: So literally, it will be, ""You have the train ticket?"" |
| Eric: Tu as le billet de train. |
| Virginie: But even after the second question… |
| Eric: Sarah still can't hear Rob. |
| Virginie: Yes. So Rob repeats his question again. |
| Eric: And this is our third and last type of closed question. |
| Virginie: Yep. |
| Eric: Rob says ""as-tu le billet de train? |
| Virginie: Yes. And that's almost the same as the second type of question, only the verb and the subject are reversed. |
| Eric: Right. So instead of ""tu as,"" we're saying, ""as-tu."" |
| Virginie: Obviously, you can't see it, but these two words ""as"" and ""tu"" have a dash between them. |
| Eric: Right. And this is just a little more formal way of posing a question. |
| Virginie: Yes. People in France don't speak this way anymore. I think we have pointed that out in the previous lesson. |
| Eric: Remember Virginie our grammar. |
| Virginie: I guess the most common type of question in French is subject-verb-complement. ""Tu as le billet de train."" |
| Eric: Very casual and simple to say. |
| Virginie: Exactly. Tu as etes etduiant, et cetera, et cetera. |
Outro |
| Virginie: So Eric, I think we're done for today. |
| Eric: Thank you. [*] |
| Virginie: Thank you. [*]. Have a great day. Bye-bye. |
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