what does cest ça mean?
Answered! Jump to accepted answer.
Chris
Kwiziq community member
16/11/17
"Qu'est ce que c'est" and "Qu'est ce que ça" are really not different in meaning at all. At least not that I could discern.
-- Chris (not a native speaker).
Gruff
Kwiziq language super star
16/11/17
It's actually "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça ?"
You were missing another 'que' - yep, there are in fact three in this form of the question!
When spoken though, this is usually run into something much shorter that sounds far less cumbersome: kess-kuh-sek-sah?
There's not much point trying to understand the phrase word by word as it doesn't make much sense that way. It just means: What's that?
On it's own, "c'est ça" means "that's it". (but in the above, it would be '...it is that').
Hope that helps!
Aurélie
Kwiziq language super star
17/11/17
Bonjour Tina !
Actually "c'est" means "it is / that is / this is", whereas "ça" only means "it / that / this" :)
Here are our related lessons:
https://french.kwiziq.com/revision/grammar/cest-means-it-is
https://french.kwiziq.com/revision/grammar/ca-means-that-this-or-it-pronoun
Bonne journée !
Your answer
Don't have an account yet? Join today
Think you've got all the answers?
Test your French to the CEFR standard
find your French level »
Tina
Kwiziq community member
16 November 2017
3 replies
what does cest ça mean?
I saw the sentence "qu'est ce que c'est ça". I thought c'est and ça means the same thing "it", so I'm a little confused why do we need to repeat it twice. My teacher said that we can also use "qu'est ce que c'est" and "qu'est ce que ça". How exactly are they different?