Toi et moi
by Paradis
How to study this song
The card for “Toi et moi” is built from 42 study entries at A2-: 15 French words, 4 adjectives and 23 verb forms. Begin with chose, passés and mots: get those and most of the lines stop being guesswork. This one leans on its verbs: 23 distinct forms against 4 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| FR | EN | ES | IT | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| chose | thing (f.) | cosa | cosa | coisa | ding | Ding, Sache |
| passés |
Adjectives
| FR | EN | ES | IT | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| normal | normal (m.) | normal | normale | normal | normaal | normal |
This card holds 3 more adjectives. You meet them when you play the song.
Verb forms
| FR | EN | ES | IT | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| se répondent | answer each other (they) | se responden | si rispondono | respondem-se | antwoorden elkaar | antworten einander |
What this song teaches you
Level · A2-
- Vocabulary words
- 15
- Adjectives
- 4
- Word combos
- 8
- Expressions
- 13
- Verb forms
- 24
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
«Toi et moi» — "you and me" — is a song by the French electronic pop duo Paradis, released in 2016 on Barclay, a Universal label. It came out first as a single, with remixes by Lifelike and I:Cube, and then as the fourth track of the duo’s only album, «Recto Verso», published on 16 September 2016. The album version lasts three minutes and forty seconds. The two members, Simon Mény and Pierre Rousseau, wrote, sang, programmed, recorded and produced the track themselves; the mix is by Julien Delfaud and the mastering by Antoine Chabert, known as Chab, two French engineers who have also worked with Daft Punk.
Mény and Rousseau met in Paris around 2010 and started Paradis in 2011. Their idea was unusual at the time: quiet songs sung in French over the patient rhythms of house music. They sent demos to Tim Sweeney, the New York DJ behind the radio show Beats in Space, and he released their first two records on his own label: «Parfait tirage» in 2011, backed with a cover of Alain Souchon’s «La Ballade de Jim», and «Hémisphère» in 2012. Barclay then signed the duo. «Garde-le pour toi» appeared online in June 2014, followed by «Sur une chanson en français» and, in January 2015, the EP «Couleurs primaires».
The album took time. In 2013 the two musicians left Paris for the south of France to write, and the release, first planned for spring 2015, was moved to September 2016 so that the record could mature. «Recto Verso» has twelve tracks, runs for a little over an hour and has no guest singers.
The song itself is a hesitant declaration. The singer speaks to one person and wonders whether they feel the same pull. He admits that he loses his balance when the other grows distant, that he is handling things clumsily, and that the other might want a clearer explanation. He promises to wait outside the other’s home and imagines two futures becoming one. The chorus ends on an open question: what does the other person think? The words are simple and close to spoken French, which makes the song approachable for learners, while the grammar offers the future, the conditional and a subjunctive in a few short lines.
Did you know?
«Le grand soir» is a real French expression. In political history it named the long-awaited evening of the revolution, when the old order would fall; today people use it, often with a smile, for any decisive night. The song borrows it for a love story.