Get prepared to find out all the things you want to know about the basic sentence "Qu'est-ce que c'est ?". This include a complete explanation of what it is and how you can use it in everyday life with an audio example. Together with the cool stuff we sprinkled like dialogue example, synonyms, slow pronunciation audio and more!
Translation : What is it?
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IPA : / kɛ-s kə sɛ ? /
The literal meaning is:
N.B: "Est-ce" = "C'est" but inverted.
This French sentence is (sadly) popular for being impossible to explain to beginners because the literal meaning is complete nonsense. This is generally translated as: "What is it?" or "What is that?".
The trick is to keep in mind that "Qu'est ce que" = "What" in this situation and "C'est ?" = "Is it?". Do not lose yourself in the literal translation, it's not worth it.
You can see "Qu'est ce que" as a long and complex way to say "What". That's why we tend to use instead "C'est quoi ?" or "C'est quoi ça ?" (What is that?) which is much simpler, shorter and neutral.
When you want to ask "What is it?" simply ask "Qu'est-ce que c'est ?" or "C'est quoi ?" or "C'est quoi ça ?". All these variations have the same meaning.
For more variations, check the "synonyms" section below.
The full variation of this expression is "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça ?" which means "What is it?" but the literal translation is "What is this that this is that this?".
Even better "Qu'est-ce que c'est que cette chose-là" which means "What is this thing?" and is literally translated as "What is this that this is this thing here?"
But both are perfectly correct in French... This language is crazy...
↓ Example in a story with English translation ↓
Finally, let's see an example in a parallel story with slow audio.
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