21 Comments
Isn't it unlikely that this sentence would use "vous" rather than "tu"? Either you're talking to a young child or you're talking to someone that you're familiar with enough that you could jokingly call a good boy.
In France, old people (and some people intransigent on good manners) still use the "vous" with every person they don't know well, even with younger persons.
Why does good come before boy? Don't most adjectives come after what they are describing?
While most adjectives do go after the noun they describe, there are some that go before. These are adjectives having to do with beauty, age, goodness, and size (B.A.G.S.). Since bon is an adjective that refers to the goodness of a person, it would go in front of the noun. Here is more on adjective placement: http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/adjectives_4.htm
At full speed this almost sounds like "vous êtes z-un bon garçon". Is this the correct reading or is this the robo-speaker acting up?
It's correct. It's called the "liaison" in French. It's the same thing between "vous" and "êtes".
You can learn more about liaisons here :
http://french.about.com/library/pronunciation/bl-liaisons.htm
Please note that in common French a lot of people don't use all the required liaisons.
Ah, merci. I am somewhat familiar with the liaison, but I think my big beef with this is that it sounded extra pronounced or separated from both "êtes" and "un", almost like it's own word, which I attributed to the robo-speaker just not doing it correctly. Thank you for the followup :)
Bon is the masculine form, bonne is the feminine form. Un bon garçon, une bonne fille :)
From google definitions: A mark (‸) placed over a vowel in some languages to indicate contraction, length, or pitch or tone.
The hat on ê of êtes is the circumflex. Seriously, that's all I know about the circumflex!
Yes, it's right, but actually it's this symbol "^", not "‸". According to Wikipedia, "the circumflex (ˆ) is one of the five diacritics used in the French language. It may be used atop the vowels a, e, i, o, and u. In French, the circumflex has three primary functions: It affects the pronunciation of a, e, eu and o; although used on i and u as well, it does not affect their pronunciation. It often indicates the historical presence of a letter (commonly s) that has, over the course of linguistic evolution, become silent and fallen away in orthography. * Less frequently, it is used to distinguish between two homophones (for example, sur [on] versus sûr [sure]). In certain words, the circumflex is idiopathic, and has no precise linguistic role." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_the_circumflex_in_French)
It's the formal form, so in this sentence, "Vous êtes" is actually singular.
