Why does French use "Est-ce que"? Understanding Cleft Sentences

[@malou1563]

Despite being a native speaker, I have 0 idea why we use "Est-ce que".Thanks a lot!

[@syedmohammadaanasfarukh890]

Great stuff! Started learning french again after like a 7 year hiatus. Your channel has been an absolute blessing with the recap. Keep up the good work dude!

[@TheTravellingLinguist]

Merci Syed! 😄

[@trinigyul7507]

3:04 I think the translation Is my friend intelligent? is; Est-ce que mon amie est intelligente? but if we were to say; Is it that my friend is intelligent? it would be translated as; Est-ce que c'est que mon amie est intelligente?

[@folyglot7806]

Really interesting! Although, my assumption was that the reason "est-ce que" was fixed despite number or tense of the topic portion of the sentence was because it referred to the overall situation. Like, I interpreted it as such: "The [thing/case/matter/issue] is that I'm hungry." -> "What's the [case/matter/issue]? *Is it that* you're hungry?" So that while semantically it is referring to the topic, grammatically the antecedent is an either overtly expressed or implied 3rd person placeholder meaning "the thing we're talking about". But maybe that doesn't hold when looked at diachronically.

[@lucsgabriel1052]

in Portuguese we have something similar, but mainly in sentences starting with questions words: "(o) que é que é isso?" literally translates to "(the)* what is that is this?", but it means "what's that?" (you could also say "o que é isso?", but "o que é que é isso?" sounds more curious); another examples could be "onde é que (es)tá isso?" (literally: "where is that is this?", but, this time, the second "to be" is the "temporary" one, that is, "estar") and "onde é que vocês (es)tão trabalhando?" (where is that y'all are working?" → "where are y'all working?") * I'm not sure if "o" here really translates to "the", but in informal Portuguese (at least in my dialect), you can omit "o" and only say "que é isso?"

[@TheTravellingLinguist]

Oh cool! That's really interesting. Which dialect of Portuguese do you speak?

[@lucsgabriel1052]

@@TheTravellingLinguist Brazilian Portuguese (specifically the Northeastern one)

[@user-jv2np4vm4x]

As a learner of French I get so confused with this part and I have to regularly revise my notes. est-ce que and est-ce qui, qui est-ce que, que est-ce qui, I just mix them all up lol

[@patolt1628]

Agreed, it's not simple. I'm French and to me of course it looks natural but I realize it's not that much. "Est-ce qui" doesn't exist: it's "est-ce qu'il" (does he?) or "est-ce qu'elle" (does she?). Same with "que est-ce qui": it doesn't exist, it might be "qui est-ce qui" like "qui est-ce qui parle ?" meaning "who is talking?" Good luck

[@aldiisnaeni1362]

@@patolt1628 so understanding.. im learning french rn.. mercii beaucoup

[@gabriela.galmos]

It’s so clear to me now!!! I’m a Spanish speaker learning French and I was soooo confused with that expression at the beginning of the sentence! I’m also a linguist, so when I read “cleft sentence” I thought “but of course it has to be a cleft sentence! 😂”. They are so complex and interesting in all languages (but also a pain in the ass), specially when they get stuck as a structure. Thanks a lot for your explanation!

[@patolt1628]

I'm French, I understand that you were confused with this expression. I have another one if you want to get a headache trying to translate it: "quand même". An Italian friend pointed it out to me someday and I realized that it was very meaningful in French but that I was almost unable to explain it. It can be "anyway" or "after all" or many other things. An example for fun : "c'est un petit bateau mais il est peut traverser l'Atlantique" (It's a small boat but it can cross the Atlantic) can lead to the following remark: "ah, quand même !" which means with 2 words something like: "really? that's unbelievable, I didn't expect that". On my side I have learnt some Spanish and it was not easy either, believe me, especially "ser y estar": I have never been able to use these verbs correctly ...

[@patolt1628]

@Rafael Dejesus I learnt some Spanish, I didn't say that I was speaking it ... I can travel in Spain, go to a hotel or a restaurant, ask for directions, things like that but I can't conduct a conversation in Spanish. I don't have enough knowledge of the grammar, a very poor vocabulary and no practice ... I didn't know that they can say "¿Es qué tú hablas francés?" in Spanish. Se puede realmente decir asi? En este caso puedo entenderlo muy bien. Si fuera tan simple, podria hablar mas espanol pero no ... al menos para mi, el espanol es muy dificil, realmente.

[@patolt1628]

@Rafael Dejesus OK. I misunderstood you. No problem

[@Papershields001]

That talking heads song really need that “Psycho killer, qu’est que c’est? Fafafafafafa” part so I’m happy French does it.

[@Hoppi1001]

Question particle. Now it makes more sense to me. It's also present in Haitian Creole (eske) which is based in French.

[@louisaaliceyoung927]

1:31 This sentence _is_ grammatically correct, but it's wordy, and hard to understand

[@folyglot7806]

I see you're not the only one being haunted by grammarly ads lol

[@Urspo]

This helps thanks

[@KingoftheJuice18]

It's a nice video, but how did you make it without mentioning the function of English question word "do"?

[@TheTravellingLinguist]

Magic! 😜✨Kidding! I tried to focus on the grammatical function rather than the translation since French learners are often told that “est-ce que” = “do/does” which is true but it’s too general of an explanation so I wanted to go a bit deeper as to the “why” behind it.

[@KingoftheJuice18]

@@TheTravellingLinguist Thanks for replying. What I meant, though, was simply to point out that English has words which function in the same way.

[@filipelinhares5073]

Thank you so much, I just could not make sense of it

[@lisaantineskul9061]

hello, do you know any French learner's dictionary like merriam-webster learner's dictionary? thanks in advance.

[@FreakishSmilePA]

Oh my God this was the video I need lol

[@curtiswfranks]

Should we expect it to change according to context? The subject is always 'it', where 'it' is a dummy pronoun rather like "il" in "il fait du soleil".