6.6 Transport — tickets and timetables — Epoché
What you will be able to do Buy a ticket at a window, including the one question you will be asked before you have finished asking your own. Hear a departure time in the twenty-four-hour clock, which is the standard clock French railways use. Ask which platform a train leaves from, and understand the answer. Ask about the two things that actually go wrong: the delay and the change of line. Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Deux billets pour deux adultes, je vous prie. [1] Two adult tickets, please. Aller-retour ou aller simple ? [2] Round trip or one-way? Prerequisites : 6.5 — you need the street questions from it, because the first thing you will do at a station is ask where something is, and because the sentence that says you have not understood is the same sentence here. See 6.5 Conversation if you have not done it. A ticket window is the most forgiving conversation in this volume and the most frightening, for the same reason: it is scripted. The clerk will ask you two or three fixed questions in a fixed order, and if you know the script you will get through it without understanding a word of what is said around you. This lesson is that script. Who is speaking to whom Most interactions at a station are formal. The clerk behind the glass, the guard on the platform, the stranger you ask about the connection: most of them will use <span lang="fr">vous</span>, and all of them will use it back. Announcements use it too, which is worth knowing because the announcement is one of the first pieces of real French you will have to understand rather than produce. There is one register wrinkle peculiar to travel. A clerk with a queue behind you speaks fast and clips everything, and that is not impatience with you in particular. Two sentences are worth having ready for it, both of them from the last lesson: the polite request for a repetition, and the summary of what you think you heard. Use them without apology; the clerk would much rather repeat a platform number than sell a ticket to somebody who is going to miss the train. How English does it English speakers mostly tell the time with the twelve-hour clock; French railways use the twenty-four-hour clock in speech as well as in print. This is the single biggest obstacle in the lesson and it is not grammar at all. A French departure is announced at eighteen hours fifteen, not at a quarter past six, and the number you have to catch is therefore one you have probably never practised hearing. Learn the hours above twelve as sounds before you need them. English says the minutes as a number; French does too, but it drops the word for minutes. The time is the hour word followed by the bare number of minutes, with nothing between them and nothing after. There is no counterpart of past or to in the official form, which makes it shorter than the English and, once you are used to it, easier. English asks what time does the train leave with a borrowed auxiliary; French inverts the real verb and puts the subject after it. The French question is literally at what hour leaves the train . Nothing is added, and the noun arrives at the end. Listen for the verb in the middle and the noun at the end and you will parse it instantly. English has one word for a ticket; French uses one word at a mainline station and another on the underground. The long-distance word also means a banknote and, historically, a short written note. The underground word is a borrowing that looks English and is used only of the small card. Ask for the wrong one and you will be understood, but you might sound less experienced. English says the train is late with the verb for being; French says it with either verb. Le train est en retard is as common as le train a du retard , but the second, in which the train has delay as a quantity of it, is the one that takes an amount: le train a trente minutes de retard . This is the same habit you met with age, and it is worth noticing as a habit rather than as an isolated fact: French likes to treat a state as a thing possessed. Buying a ticket French English Note Deux billets pour deux adultes, je vous prie. [1] Two adult tickets, please. the whole request in one sentence, politely Aller-retour ou aller simple ? [2] Round trip or one-way? one of the first questions the clerk asks; learn it as a sound Aller-retour ? Aller simple seulement. [3] Round trip? Just one way. the same question, repeated by the traveller to confirm, and its answer Reste-t-il des billets ? [4] Are there any tickets left? asking whether any are left; note the impersonal verb Avez-vous un billet ? [5] Have you got a ticket? what the guard asks you on the train Voici mon billet. [6] Here is my ticket. the answer, two words plus a possessive Avez-vous perdu votre billet ? [7] Have you lost your ticket? the perfect, asked if you cannot find it Puis-je payer en euros ? [8] Can I pay in euros? a question worth having in a border station The second row is the one to drill until it is automatic. The clerk will ask it before you have finished your own sentence, it is four words long, and the two halves are the words for a return and for a single. If you do not recognise it you will freeze at exactly the wrong moment; if you do, you answer in two words and the transaction is nearly over. The fourth row contains a construction you should notice in passing. The verb is impersonal and means something like does there remain , and it is the ordinary way to ask whether anything is left of something. It will come back when you meet the impersonal verbs properly. The first dialogue: at the ticket window A traveller buys two tickets to another city. Eleven lines, and the clerk asks only one question, the fixed one about a return or a single ticket. Notice how short the traveller's half is. Bonjour, monsieur ! [9] Good day, Sir! Deux billets pour deux adultes, je vous prie. [1] Two adult tickets, please. Aller-retou