My favorite Internet radio station is Radio Deliro, a French station, which plays an amazing, eclectic mix of music. They have no commercials or announcements, but every few songs they play a riff of some silly sound mix, that always ends with the same two phrases. I can decipher the last one -- at least I think it is "il est bon, ça." But right before that is something that I haven't been able to figure out. I don't think we can upload sound files here, so I recorded it and posted it online on my own website.

I hope some French speaker can listen to this (it's a .wav file and should play in your browser, I think) and tell me what they are saying. There is a first a little nonsense followed by laughing and then a woman's voice saying the part that I can't figure out before the last bit. Here is the link to the sound file.

- Roz

You will be mad! The woman says: "Radio Deliro".

On this file I can hear:

"Vous êtes sur une route départementale !"

"Allo tonton ! Pourquoi tu tousses ?"

"Radio Deliro"

"Il le vende ça ?"

I think all the sentences, except for "Radio Deliro", are part of comical shows. That said the last one is particularly hard to understand even for a Frenchman.

Wow, I cannot get "Radio Deliro" out of that! I just don't have the ear for French. But thank you so much, Sylvain. This really has been bothering me for a long time, to hear this several times a day and have no clue what it means.

Just a little correction for my previous post: the last sentence is "Ils le vendent ça ?". "Il le vende ça ?" is not grammatically correct!

quote:

the last sentence is "Ils le vendent ça ?". "Il le vende ça ?" is not grammatically correct!

Can you explain why? And exactly what it means? Il le vende would be "he sells it", and ils le vendent "they sell it," n'est-ce pas? I thought the ça on the end was for emphasis but I don't really understand that usage. Is there some idiomatic sense here that I don't know?

Roz, you got it.
It's a very slangy way of talking. Nothing vulgar, just "down home".
"Ils le vendent ça ?"
- What, they sell that stuff?

"Il le vende" only exists in the subjonctive present form: "Qu'il le vende". "He sells it" translates in "Il le vend" without the final e (and then you don't pronounce the d).

As Americana confirmed to you "ça" in this form is for emphasis.

These are excerpts of numbers from well known french comedians:
-Route départementale: Jean Yanne
-Allo tonton: Fernand Raynaud
-Ils le vendent ça: Coluche