I was recently listening to an interview (in French) with an actress who used the expression quand même in just about every sentence, and it almost seemed as if it had a different meaning each time she used it, so I decided to find out what was going on and googled up this useful site:
Used extensively—and almost exclusively—in spoken French, the expression quand même has a multitude of meanings.
1) To disregard an impediment
The original meaning is also the simplest: quand même is an adverbial phrase meaning something like “still” or “anyway” when you can’t, shouldn’t, or don’t want to do something. […]2) Acknowledgement of an impediment
Related to the first meaning, quand même can indicate unexpected, contradictory, or adverse conditions. […]3) Triumph over an impediment
Quand même can succinctly reference the overcoming of adversity. […]4) Emphasis
Informally, quand même can be used for emphasis. […]5) Interjection
Quand même can indicate a strong reaction like surprise, disbelief, or outrage. I think this is the trickiest to understand, and hesitate to use it for fear of being misunderstood. […]6) Rhetorical question / Disbelief
Quand même with a future construction indicates that whatever you’re thinking about doing is probably not a good idea. […]7) Acknowledgement
Recognition of effort or a saving grace. […]
Those summaries aren’t much use without examples; fortunately, the site has loads of them, which I have elided with ellipses. Perhaps my favorite is the slogan on a 1914 poster:
France toujours ! France quand même !
Unrelated, but this MetaFilter post says:
Stuck in a World of Twin Languages and 600 Pronouns tells the story of a dimension-hopping linguist trying to understand and survive a language spoken by intelligent and/or cybernetic palm trees. Each chapter brings new orthographic and societal horrors. And yes, there’s a tonal variant, since creator ZeWei has experience making songs with conlangs.
Someone who likes videos more than I do might want to check it out. (And if you think it’s so good I should watch it despite my reluctance, let me know!)
《 France toujours ! France quand même ! 》looks like a slogan that might have invited a wide range of amusing/ unfortunate/ deliberate misreadings.
what… ever…
I rather enjoyed the video, but YMMV.
It has some overlap with English all the same, no?
Even so.
What’s with all this needless mystification, anyway?
The thing about it being confined to spoken French seems to be true enough, though my original research is limited to grepping through the only two books in French that are currently on my phone, viz Laurent Binet’s altogether wonderful La septième fonction du langage (where it appears only in dialogue) and a French translation of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (where it does not appear at all.) It is conceivable that this does not constitute a fully representative sample.
This, of course, raises the question of how you say quand même in written French.
Francophone* Hatters will be able to tell us.
* Francograph?
I don’t think “all the same” works as either 5) Interjection or 7) Acknowledgement. So it is not, in fact, all the same.
Right, hence the weaselly “overlap”.
I am not familiar with M. Binet’s literary output but wikipedia advises me that “In 2015, he published his second novel, La septième fonction du langage, which was translated in 2017 as The Seventh Function of Language, a detective thriller dealing with a fictionalized account of Roland Barthes’s death.” I assume that as with any French post-modern theorist there was such a large number of people wishing Barthes dead and/or standing to profit by his death that there’s quite a complicated mess for the detective to sort through?
But I guess the more important question here is does the novel’s title presuppose that we all already know (yawn!) about six functions of language, but the revelation of the seventh will be dramatic and unexpected?
There are six functions of language: instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, informative, heuristic, and imaginative. No, wait, that’s seven — there are seven functions of language…
@Hat So it is not, in fact, all the same.
As others have hinted, I think you’re imputing too much to the phrase. It’s a filler, it has no specific meaning(s), it marks ‘hang on while i get my thoughts together’.
Much as ‘那个 ‘neiga” in Chinese topolects.
It’s a filler, it has no specific meaning(s), it marks ‘hang on while i get my thoughts together’.
“Pues.
Bueno pues.
Pues bien.
Pues nada.”
—Sayings of my adopted grandmother, Santander, Spain, 1968.
Pues nada
I often hear that from a science tertulia DJ on the radio from Las Canarias. It took me a while to learn that his prolonged “puesss ….. nada” when seguing was not merely an idiosyncrasy. It was clear that it functioned like “ok … let’s see now …” (“hang on while I get my thoughts together”).
A ver …
It’s a filler, it has no specific meaning(s), it marks ‘hang on while i get my thoughts together’.
No, it can have meaning, and the website linked to in the post demonstrates that very well.
But you’ve pointed out yet another function that it does indeed effectively serve, which should be added to the list on that website…
And it does get used in writing. Just not as often as in speech.
Pues nada has a very specific meaning when used towards the end of a lengthy conversation, especially on the phone. It means “We’ve been talking long enough now and I really would like to stop/hang up and do something else”.
“Pues nada, hablamos mañana y me cuentas más, ¿vale?…”
Dude? Dude! Dude.
Gide, Journal (1889-1939)
—
1. Tout m’est égal; je suis heureux. Je suis profondement heureux quand meme. Cela suffit… Et j’aurai connu la tristesse.
2. A vrai dire, je ne persuadai pas Em. ; je le sentis bien, mais qu’y faire ? Aller quand meme de l’avant.
3. Des que l’emotion décroit la plume devrait stopper; quand elle continue quand même de courir (et elle n’en court que mieux), l’ecriture devient haissable.
4. Je sais a present qu’il n’est pas prudent de vouloir travailler quand même, et qu’une fatigue profonde en pourrait résulter.
5. II me semblait que j’avais au bout des bras les mains d’une autre personne; je me suis contraint neanmoins a jouer quand même; j’admire d’avoir pu mener jusqu’au bout la Ballade.
6. La meilleure et la seule reponse que la N. R. F, puisse faire a leurs insultes, c’est d’accepter, quand même et aussi cordialement que devant, leur copie.
7. Hitlérisme et meme fascisme, restent un effroyable danger; bâillonné, l’Esprit perd son eloquence. L’on voudrait l’imaginer triomphant quand meme… Decidement le risque est trop gros.
—
I have not considered examples which are reported or given as speech, and I have not corrected OCR errors which I consider unimportant. You could say a diary is not a good source for written language, but I think at least 3-6 would not be out of place in a descriptive or philosophical text. I would make a case for a written meaning of “in spite of all that / everything”, distinct from and much narrower than the range in spoken language. I tried to find examples in Amélie Nothomb for comparson with a stylist writing in the late 20 / early 21st century, but only found the phrase embedded in dialogue.
“At any rate”?
The English language ‘withal,’ not much used now, has an ‘even so’ meaning, but also has extended uses, perhaps resembling ‘quand même.’ Most of the times I encounter ‘withal’ I have to puzzle out what purpose it’s serving in that specific context.