8.4 An interview — interruptions and hesitations — Epoché
What you will be able to hear The small words that fill real speech and never appear in a news bulletin: euh , ben , bah , bon , alors , en fait , du coup . How speakers hesitate, start, reformulate, interrupt and react. The difference between a filler, which you can ignore, and a word that carries meaning, which you cannot. Spoken sentences with dropped ne and shortened words at natural speed. Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Vous voulez bien nous excuser un moment ? [1] Would you excuse us one moment? Je parie que vous vous demandez comment ça marche. [2] I bet you're wondering how this works. Je ne peux pas excuser ce que vous avez fait. [3] I can't condone what you did. Comme je prenais une douche, je n'ai pas entendu le téléphone. [4] Since I was having a shower, I didn't hear the phone. Je veux que vous parliez franchement. [5] I want you to speak frankly. Cyrano avait un très grand nez. [6] Cyrano had a very large nose. Prerequisites : 8.3 — this lesson follows 8.3 Listening , whose prepared speech it contrasts with. You need the familiar grammar of 5.21 Vocabulary : the dropped ne , on for nous , t'es for tu es . Before you listen A news bulletin is read from a script. An interview, a phone call or a conversation is not: speakers think while they talk, hesitate, start again, interrupt each other and fill the gaps with small words. To an English ear these words are noise that hides the message. Once you know them, they become signals: they tell you that the speaker is thinking, changing direction, disagreeing or about to conclude. Hesitation. French hesitates with euh , a long neutral vowel, where English says um or er . Never say um in French: it marks you at once as an English speaker. Euh can come anywhere, even inside a phrase: un nez… euh… un nez très grand . Starting. Alors , bon and ben open a turn. Alors is the neutral so ; bon marks a decision or a change of subject, right , well then ; ben , a spoken form of bien , introduces an answer that seems obvious to the speaker: ben non , well, no . Bah is similar but more dismissive. Reformulating. Speakers correct themselves with enfin , which here means I mean , not finally ; with c'est-à-dire , that is ; with je veux dire and disons , let's say . Connecting. Two connectors have spread through spoken French in recent decades. En fait , actually , in fact , often just opens a sentence. Du coup , so , as a result , now appears in almost every explanation. Both are informal; avoid them in writing. Closing. Many spoken explanations end with voilà , that's it , or with an unstressed quoi , which adds nothing but a shrug: c'était bizarre, quoi . Young speakers also use genre as English speakers use like . These closing words are absent from the corpus sentences below, but you will hear them in any French film. Interrupting. French conversation tolerates more overlap than English. A polite interruption is excusez-moi de vous interrompre ; a familiar one, attends . Questions Listen to each group of sentences without looking at the transcript. Sentences 1 to 4: which small word shows hesitation, and in which sentence does it come in the middle of a phrase? Sentences 5 to 8: which words open a turn? Which sentence answers with an obvious no? Sentences 9 to 11: which sentence rephrases, which checks that the listener follows, and which concedes a point? Sentences 12 to 14: which two connectors of spoken French do you hear? Sentences 15 to 17: which sentence is a polite interruption, and which a familiar one? Sentences 18 to 20: how do the speakers announce a frank opinion or an admission? Sentences 21 to 25: which reactions are positive or ironic, and which are negative? Dictation. Listen again to sentences 4, 8, 12 and 21 and write them word for word, including every small word. Transcript French English Euh... Comment ça marche ? [7] Uh... How's that working? Euh, vous voudrez bien m'excuser ? [8] Uh, will you excuse me? Donc euh je prends du poulet. [9] Well then, I'll have chicken. Vous... vous avez un nez... euh... un nez... très grand. [10] You... You have a nose... err... a very big nose. Alors, as-tu décidé ? [11] Well, have you decided? Bon, d'accord. [12] OK, agreed. Bon, on commence-tu ? [13] Well, should we get started? Ben non, j'pense pas. [14] Well, no, I don't think so. Elle est la mère de ma femme, c'est-à-dire ma belle-mère. [15] She is my wife's mother, that is to say, my mother-in-law. Voyez-vous ce que je veux dire ? [16] Do you see what I mean? Disons que tu as raison. [17] Let's say that you're right. Je prenais une douche, du coup je n'ai pas entendu le téléphone. [18] I was taking a shower, so I didn't hear the phone. Tu as raison, en fait. [19] You're actually right. C'est en fait la vérité. [20] That’s actually the truth. Excusez-moi de vous interrompre. [21] Excuse me for interrupting. Attends voir ! [22] Hold on a minute. Ben demandez ! [23] Well, ask! Franchement, vous avez tort. [24] Frankly speaking, you are in the wrong. Franchement, je ne pense pas. [25] Frankly, I don't think so. À vrai dire, je plaisantais. [26] Actually, I was joking. Ben voyons ! [27] Sure! Ben justement ! [28] Precisely! C'est n'importe quoi. [29] That's all such nonsense. Bah, ça craint ! [30] Well, that sucks! À vrai dire, oui. [31] Actually, yes. The sentences are separate corpus sentences, grouped by function for this lesson. Sentence 4 is a speaker searching for an insult: it is the clumsy line of a young nobleman in the first act of Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), to which Cyrano replies with his famous speech about his own nose. Sentence 7 ends with -tu , a question marker of Quebec French, used even with on : on commence-tu ? , shall we start? Practice Strip the fillers. Write sentences 1, 3 and 8 without their fillers, as they would appear in a written text. Add the fillers. Make this answer sound spoken, with at least three smal