French Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the French language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Stromae's formidable lyrics are
Je vais pas vous draguer, promis, juré…
I'm a beginner at French, and recently learned that is expected the form
subject + ne + verb + pas
when you want to negate something. But there's no ne in his phrase, even though he means that he does not want to hit on her.
Is it a common thing not to use ne? Does pas by itself make clear that I'm negating something?
The "subject + ne + verb + pas" is the correct way to say it, but the "subject + verb + pas" is the informal way to say it.
Example :
I am not a boy
Will be translated in a formal way by
Je ne suis pas un garçon
And in an informal way
Je suis pas un garçon
French people tend to choose the informal one in everyday life, but if you study French, I'll advise you to use the formal version.
In addition, in those lyrics of Stromae, he's playing a drunk person (falling, barely stay on his foot etc..) which justifies the use of the second version.
Actually, it is a very good question. Most native speakers don't use ne when they speak but use it when they write. I do that too.
However, as stated above, if you study french, the best way is to use ne when you write so you can get a good habit in writing French. After being used to that for a while, you may remove the ne when you speak, as it's more French and you'll sound more like a native.
It is really common to remove ne in spoken language, particularly in informal talks, with your friends or family for example, even though it is not grammatically correct.
For written language you can also skip it in informal talks, but again, it's not grammatically correct.
In formal written language you should always use ne
