I asked a stranger a question about French language

Never Done: Stopped a stranger on the street and asked him a question about French language

I was walking down 7th Avenue when I heard a French speaking man say loudly, "Si, il y'a!" (Yes, there are!) (Is it too early in this post to put in a parenthetical about the relatively high number of French speakers in Park Slope? And not just from the African diaspora, but also a lot of French national expats.) This guy was outside a boarded-up hookah lounge, talking with two workers about, it seems, renovations to the space. And suddenly I flashed back to a conversation I had had sometime in the last year, when I responded to something using the word "si" meaning "yes" and this person laughed at me, assuming I was confusing my French with my Spanish. But I wasn't. As I tried to explain to them, there are times when you use "si" in French to mean "yes" ... but as soon as I started to explain it, I realized that I knew how to do it right, but I didn't actually why. In other words, I was like a native speaker who had not paid attention in grammar class; I didn't know what rule I was following.

So when I walked past this French man who emphatically exclaimed, "Si, il y'a!" I considered stopping to ask him, but he was clearly in the middle of work, so I walked on. But then I remembered my commitment to the Never Done practice (if I think of it, I should probably do it) and I walked back and waited for him to be done with the guys he was talking with. And then, a little shy, a little sheepish, I asked him (in French) if I could ask him a question about French. And he, a little surprised, and a little awkward, said that yes, he would try.

So I asked Mr. Hookah Lounge renovator my question, "Quand est-ce qu'on peut dire si quand on veut dire oui?" And he took just a second to think, before he said it's when you are actually saying yes but contradicting someone else's negative statement. Like when they say, "She isn't beautiful" (his example) but you think she really is, so you say "Si, elle est belle." Also, if they say something like, "You don't want 8-foot windows?" You can say, "Si" meaning that you do want 8-foot windows. As soon as he explained this, I realized I mostly heard it in political discussions, when one person would argue that, say, unions have lost political relevance, and the other person would respond, "Mais si, les syndicats sont encore important."

We don't have a comparable word for "si" in English. Unless you're six years old and you're on a playground, and someone says "You didn't touch first base." And you say, "Did too!" And they say, "Uh uh!" And you say, "Yuh huh!" And they say, "Mais non!" and you say, "Si!"

Now I wish I could go back to the person who laughed at me and told me I can't use "si" to mean "yes" and say, "Can too!"