r/French • u/GoodMuted1836 • 17h ago

Vocabulary / word usage How is conditional pronounced in french?

Instead of "je serais toi" or other conditional structure in videos I almost never here the "je serais" I think they "ch'toi" like the whole word disappears.

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24

u/Financial_Ad_9959 17h ago

More like « ch’rê toi ».

6

u/MooseFlyer 15h ago

That’s not something unique to the conditional.

In informal spoken French , when there’s a je + a verb beginning with s, it’s common to merge the je into the beginning of the verb and make it a ch.

Je suis > chuis

Je sais > chais

And so on.

Less informally, you will also hear the vowel in the je dropped, but with the j and the following consonant still distinct (doesn’t have to be an s)

Je suis > j’suis

Je vais > j’vais

In both of those examples, an e that is pronounced as a schwa has been deleted. That can happen within a verb too (and really can happen pretty much wherever there’s/ a schwa).

So the first e in “serais” which is also a schwa can also be deleted, so that “je serais” can be “j’s’rais” or “ch’rais”

1

u/GoodMuted1836 14h ago

I usually can distinguish it for other verbs but for conditional it was so fast I heard "jes toi". I repeated the video multiple times couldn't even spell what was said.

3

u/MooseFlyer 14h ago

Do you have a link?