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I found lots of video clips about Nouvelles en Français facile and they keep it at A1 and A2 levels and some videos are at B1 levels.

I'm watching an video right now and they say

(1) Selon moi, changer les idées pendant le confinement

Which means

According to me, exchange the ideas during the isolation

But according to the text sheet, it stands for

(2) Selon moi, pour se changer les idées pendant le confinement

But when I listen to the voice, I can only hear (1).

Listen at 2:53 here. And see the text at page 2 here .

What does he say? Is it (1) or (2)?

Is this fast spoken French, or just "lazy" French?

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  • As no one as precised it, we never say "changer" to mean to exchange, excepted for money (as in "bureau de change"). The word for "to exchange" is "échanger".
    – Distic
    Commented Feb 21, 2021 at 10:40

3 Answers 3

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There is indeed no audible "pour se" at the beginning of the sentence. A lazy answer dropping it is not impossible but I would expect at least S'changer les idées...

Another explanation might just be a soundtrack editing problem, especially as the onset of changer sounds a little weird.

In any case, the end of the sentence is constructed in a way that makes the lack of pour se not grammatical, so it's reasonable for a written transcription to keep it.

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  • So you mean that the recording is very...bad french?
    – euraad
    Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 17:39
  • Not at all, the French as it is spoken is fine, slightly slow but definitely right. What is poor is the onset (l'attaque) of the word changer which exhibits a probable technical issue.
    – jlliagre
    Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 17:58
  • Yes. The speaker is slow, but the guest. Émilien who plays the games. Is he slow, or fast?
    – euraad
    Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 18:33
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    The sound isn't crystal clear, I nevertheless hear on peut because my brain corrects in real time the signal perceived by my ear. That's definitely a recording issue too.
    – jlliagre
    Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 20:40
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    @danielmartensson Emilien is not fast for sure, but closer to an average speed. Still yiu can hear there's an effort made not to speak too fast and articulate the words. I'm quite sure this recording was made with learners in mind
    – Laurent S.
    Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 23:04
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I'm pretty sure this is just some issue with audio editing of this recording. This is obviously an edited track, and it seems the person assembling these bits of audio together just started this bit (containing the answer) a bit too late, accidentally dropping the "pour se" part in the start. Which gets "corrected" in the transcript.

I've listened several times carefully, and it seems more and more obvious there was something said before as start of the answer is very abrupt, just as it would be if you start the recording in the middle of a sentence.

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  • So you mean that the recording is very...bad french?
    – euraad
    Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 17:39
  • I mean recording is badly edited and when you miss words in a sentence it's an issue in any language. Except for these missing words the rest is pretty good.
    – Laurent S.
    Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 22:59
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This is obviously a technical issue, and we hear a blank/pause instead of pour se. The target audience and slow speech is incompatible with reduction and reduction wouldn't result in dropping pour se anyways; rather, some sounds would drop. The preposition pour is central to the turn of phrase here and the reflexive pronoun se is essential to leveraging the pronominal transitive use of the verb (se) changer with idées.

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