Adding "quoi" ("what" en anglais, and usually interrogative) at the end of a sentence as a sort of rhetorical flourish is pretty common in spoken French. Virginia has been trying to get me to say it and other "French" things so I sound less like a barbaric American (my words, not hers) and more like a fluent francophone. Things like using "quoi" properly are hard to get--it's basically colloquial language and doesn't correspond exactly to the meaning of the word that I learned in school. I've been using "oui?" instead, which Virginia says marks me immediately as foreign. She said something to the effect of "It makes one wonder whether you're Belgian. Or weird."
Since my parents will probably vouch against the former, I guess we're left with the latter. I hope the French will still accept me, quoi.
Nobody here but us servantless American writers...
3 comments:
Ha ha! It's like being English and saying, "What what?" after everything. Like Sir Grummore in The Once and Future King.
languages evolve even if their evolution doesn't follow previously established grammatical rules. deal with it.
better to sound like a local thus ending up in local conversations with more locals rather than being *correct* and ending up in *correct* conversations with other foreigners.
good luck and happy new year
A: Yeah, it does feel sort of like that, which is probably one reason I haven't quite grasped it yet--my editor brain goes "'Quoi'? You mean like 'what'? Shouldn't that be a question?" And by the time I realize I could've used the word, I've already finished the sentence with "oui?" instead. The main reason, though, is not enough immersion in French yet. (We speak English around the house mostly, and many of V's friends speak English as well and often switch automatically to speaking it with me.)
C: Of course. That's language. Grammar describes and doesn't prescribe the way we use it. It's a product of language and a tool to help in its use, not the boundary of it. I just find it amusing to watch my high school/university-learned French get smacked around because it's out of touch by ten years and I learned it via rules of grammar, not experiential immersion in living language.
Happy New Year (bonne année) to you too--and also merry Christmas. How has it been?
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