Yes, interesting that many people start with 'mais si, ...' I too have heard many occasions where 'si' was used on its own.

Vous n'etes pas satisfait? Si.
Vous n'avez pas fini votre devoir? Si, je l'ai fini.

There were a number of linguistic oddities in that movie, I thought (not the use of si, which I was taught many, many years ago), but how about all the times someone said " je ne sais" instead of " je ne sais pas." And the fact that every woman in it, old, young, married, and unmarried, was referred to as Madame?

Were those period things?

Hey, St. Cirq, with my extremely limited French, I was lucky to catch the oui/si thing. You've lost me now.

Ne is the traditional negative form in French 'pas' meaning step, originally being a complement.

As such, as 17th century French person would say 'je ne sais'+pas for emphasis.

Strangely, in modern French, pas has overtaken ne as the negative, so a modern French person is likely to say 'je sais pas'

There are certain verbs in French which can be used with only "ne" in the negative: e.g. savoir, pouvoir, cesser, oser.
As in, "je ne saurais vous dire", "il ne cesse de parler", "il n'ose le faire" etc.
(Though I believe there are restrictions on when and how this simple negation can be used).
Perhaps this explains the "ne sais" that StCirq refers to.

Also, I believe that "point" used to be used rather than "pas" as the second part of the negative in French. I think "pas" is fairly recent.

Thank you, hanl. I now know something that I didn't know a few minutes ago. And your examples ring so true in my mind that I am sure I have heard or read them many times and internalised them in my comprehension range, but not in my language production. I'll be in France at the end of the month, and look for excuses to use them!

There are other complements used with "ne", as in "Je ne sais rien" or "Il n'y avait personne".

On the si/oui distinction, my rule of thumb is that "si" is used for the unexpected yes, and sometimes used for emphasis in argument.

Yes, "ne" in french denotes the negative, and whatever tail is used with it emphasises the negative in proper and more exacting context. Thus Ne + pas = not (with ne on its own being a slightly milder or slangy form of 'not' as a french friend recently explained to me when I asked about the use of 'ne' without the 'pas'), and as Padraig mentions, ne + rien = nothing, ne + personne = no one or nobody (though 'personne' can also be used on it's own to mean the same thing) and ne + que = only (as in nothing else).

thanks, guys - subtleties I wasn't aware of with the negative.

But what about calling all those girls Madame?

Eh?

"But what about calling all those girls Madame?"

I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know if this is appropriate, but apparently the title Madame was once used to address women belonging to certain high ranks of the nobility, whether married or not.

Otherwise, maybe it was filmed in Belgium? People here seem to use Madame almost exclusively. ;-)

Thanks, hanl. I'm now reading Rue des Boutiques Obscures by Modiano and I was also wondering why he sometimes uses "ne" without "pas" and with no jamais/rien/personne either.

It's used emphatically.

"I was also wondering why he sometimes uses "ne"..."

There's also a complicated little thing called the "expletive ne", which is used after certain verbs and expressions, but has no negative value per se.

E.g. &quot;Il est plus beau que je <i>ne</i> le croyais&quot; = He is more handsome than I thought.

There's an about.com article that explains it better than I can - http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa011901e.htm

Hey, hanl, are you trying to burst our little brains? That's another construction that I understand and have probably seen and heard, but have never troubled myself thinking about.

And I can't handle that much thinking. Leave my ignorance undisturbed.

Sorry. I get a bit too worked up about French grammar.

I should probably get out more.

Yes, I'm aware of that thing as well, I manage to grab the meaning from the context each time this form comes my way.
But he was probably using savoir, pouvoir, cesser, oser, as you explained above. Anyway, I find it a fascinating book and being a novice French-language reader, not hard to follow.

Padraig, the appropriate response to hanl's example should have been, &quot;Thank you very much.&quot;

E-mailed this thread to my French son, Sylvain and asked to give me something intelligent to write about it... and all he said was:

&lt;Nothing much to say about that, yeah some people do use &quot;si&quot; instead of
oui, but always in the context mentionned by Michel_Paris&gt;

hanl

Point is old. I used it and a Froggie friend asked me if I was 300 years old.

On a vague tangent, written and spoken French are far more divergent than in English.

They have a whole tense that is only written and never spoken (except by stuffy professors)

&quot;They have a whole tense that is only written and never spoken (except by stuffy professors)&quot;
I agree - and it's the bane of my life! (I'm a translator) That kind of language often doesn't work well in English.

(note to above post - I don't just mean the tense, but that whole register of fancy literary language.)