I need help with French?

Question

I've studied French now for four years and I just read a text and discovered something I've never heard about.

When you use a negation you say "Je NE sais PAS", for example. The writer of the text said that in daily spoken french you exclude "ne", meaning that you would say "Je sais pas". So now I'm asking you, is this true? And if it is, is it considered incorrect excluding "ne" while writing an essay for example.

Thanks for your time :)

Answer 1

80 % of the time, we exclude partially the "ne" in spoken French: "je n'sais pas" or "j'nai pas envie" or completely: "je sais pas" "j'ai pas envie" "t'es pas sympa!"...

it's not for sloppy speakers (as someone said) and it's not incorrect French, everybody does that!

it depends who you're talking to...it's like in English, you have different levels of languages, you don't always say: "you are not", you sometimes say "you're not" or "you aren't", right?

When writing an essay for example for school, you shouldn't exclude it when it's narration (because your teachers could think that you don't know how to do proper negations). But if you write a novel, you can exclude the negation when it's dialogues.

(it's the same for "nous", we rarely say: "nous voulons", we always say "ON veut" , we rarely say "il y a", we say "ilia" or "ya";  we sometimes say "i croit" (that's incorrect) instead of "il croit"

that's the kind of things that foreigners should know to understand us,  but that they're never taught because teachers think it's bad French, but it's just what we always say, so why shouldn't foreigners do the same?.)

Answer 2

You don't HAVE to exclude the "ne" in spoken French.  In fact, you can make it seem as if you aren't even saying the "ne" properly by just conjoining "je" and "ne" to make a "jhun" sound.

When writing in French, you ALWAYS include the "ne."

Answer 3

I had the same problem a few months ago. I moved to France to study and my teachers constantly corrected me for using the ne negation whilst speaking, particularly in my french oral class(taught by a french native). I found it very difficult to understand as I had never been told this in the Uk and had in fact been corrected to the opposite. However, living in France taught me that whilst speaking the ne negation is very rarely used, I personally would now only use the ne negation in writing (so yes definitely still use it in essays) and only in speaking if it were in a formal situation. I certainly never had anyone correct me for not using the ne negation whilst speaking as someone suggested.

I know it's confusing at first but that's only due to the way French is taught in other countries, basically exclude it in spoken french but include it in writing!

Hope this has been of some help to you

Answer 4

There are sloppy speakers who don't say "ne", but it would be unwise to imitate them. When foreigners take such liberties with the language, they find themselves constantly being corrected. Stick to ne...pas and you'll know you're doing the right thing. And whatever you do, don't leave the "ne" out of your written work.

Answer 5

When you speak it you dont really pronounce it but you do hear it ... it's kin of said quickly but you can her the n but not so clearly : )

Answer 6

It's true that you don't need to use the "ne" in daily speech. actually it's never used by native speakers when they talking, although if you need to write an essay you need to use the hole negation in order to produce a written language that is grammatically correct; particullary if it is a language test!! although read carefully the instructions regarding the kind of linguistic register the essay need to be written in...in higher language levels, courses are about learning everyday speech and slang!  

Answer 7

In text you say it and in daily speaking you exclude easy as pie.

Answer 8

It is very commonly used in everyday French- in both written and spoken communication. In my experience, French people are more likely to leave the 'ne' out than they are to use it! It would not be entirely 'incorrect' to use it in an essay, but you should probably avoid it in very formal or academic writing.