Apostraphes and added -t-.

[James H Smith]

Can someone help ?

I know that these are "fine" points, but each time I think I understand, a new one catches me out !

 

a) the written apostraphe denoting a missing vowel, such as;  qu'elle, c'est, l'hotêl, s'il vous plaît.

When and where used ?

 

b) the added -t-, as in "...a-t-il..."

Why, when and where ?

 

Merci d'avance

(as you can see, I use the apostraphe, without fully understanding !!!)

[Neil Coffey]

In (a), in general the short "function" words ending in -e delete the final -e and use an apostrophe before a following word beginning with a vowel. So this essentially means de, que, le, ce, je, me etc plus compound words based on que (lorsque, jusque, quoique plus expressions like parce que...). There are a few "corner" cases, particularly with the two-syllable words like lorsque, but that's the basic idea.

The word si is a bit of an exception-- it's essentially just before the word il(s) that the word is elided to s'il(s) (cf. si elle, si André, not s'elle, s'André).

In (b), basically the rule is that when subject-verb inversion is used with a 3rd person verb, the form of that verb must end in -t (or -d, which actually represents a -t sound in this case). If the verb doesn't already end in -t or -d in the spelling, then -t- is inserted. So: prend-il, croit-elle don't need the extra -t-, but mange-t-il, croie-t-elle do.