Les registres : familier, courant, soutenu

Unité CO-07 · campagne 4 · qui parle à qui, et comment.

French runs on three audible registers, and B2 items ask you to name them or — harder — to infer the situation from them.

• Familier: bosser, le boulot, j'en ai marre, and above all the dropped ne (il pouvait pas venir). Friends, family, radio vox-pops.
• Courant (the "standard" of textbooks): neutral vocabulary, full negation. The default of news anchors — which is why deviations from it are always a signal.
• Soutenu: nous vous saurions gré de…, s'entretenir avec, inversion in questions, the subjunctive respected. Administration, diplomacy, formal broadcasting.

Two exam uses. First, direct identification: quel registre… ? — answer from the markers above, not from the topic (a strike can be discussed in all three). Second, situational inference: register reveals the relationship. A message in soutenu is institutional; a dropped ne plus le boulot means the mic caught private speech. And note the editorial layer: the same fact arrives as le chef de l'État s'est entretenu avec son homologue on one station and Macron a discuté avec le chancelier on another — same event, different distance.

The practice set makes you name registers, spot their cues, and read the situations behind them.

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