Breakdown of En vrai, je préfère rester à la maison ce soir.
Questions & Answers about En vrai, je préfère rester à la maison ce soir.
En vrai literally means in real (life) or in reality, but in this sentence it works more like a discourse marker:
En vrai, je préfère rester à la maison ce soir.
Honestly / To be honest / Actually, I’d rather stay home tonight.
So here En vrai is similar to English honestly, to be honest, or sometimes actually, introducing what you really think.
Both can sometimes be translated as actually, but they are not used in the same way:
En vrai (in this sense)
- Very informal, often used by younger speakers.
- Has a personal, subjective feel: to be honest, truthfully.
- Emphasizes what you really think or feel.
- Example: En vrai, ça ne me dit rien. – Honestly, I don’t feel like it.
En fait
- More neutral, more common in both spoken and written French.
- Often introduces a correction or clarification, like actually / in fact.
- Example: En fait, je viens demain, pas aujourd’hui. – Actually, I’m coming tomorrow, not today.
In many casual conversations, a learner could use En fait instead of En vrai, but it would not have exactly the same “to be honest” nuance.
En vrai is quite informal and colloquial, especially common in spoken language and among younger people. It’s fine in:
- conversations with friends
- text messages
- social media comments
In a formal context (e.g. email to your boss, an academic paper), it is better to use something like:
- Pour être honnête, je préfère rester à la maison ce soir.
(To be honest, I’d rather stay home tonight.) - En réalité, je préfère rester à la maison ce soir.
(In reality, I prefer to stay home tonight.)
So: in your sentence it sounds friendly and casual, not formal.
In this kind of sentence, En vrai is usually placed at the beginning, followed by a pause (written as a comma):
- En vrai, je préfère rester à la maison ce soir.
You can technically move it:
- Je préfère, en vrai, rester à la maison ce soir.
- Je préfère rester à la maison ce soir, en vrai.
…but those versions sound more unusual, heavier, or slightly theatrical. The natural position as a discourse marker is at the start of the sentence, with a comma.
In informal writing (texts, chats), some people might even skip the comma, but the comma is standard.
With préférer, French uses directly an infinitive, without a preposition:
- Je préfère rester. – I prefer to stay / I’d rather stay.
- Je préfère sortir. – I prefer to go out.
So:
- ✅ Je préfère rester à la maison.
- ❌ Je préfère de rester à la maison. (incorrect)
When you compare two actions, you also use the infinitive directly:
- Je préfère rester à la maison plutôt que sortir.
I prefer staying at home rather than going out.
Both are correct, but they are not equally polite:
Je préfère rester à la maison ce soir.
- Present tense.
- More direct: I prefer to stay / I’d rather stay home tonight.
- Fine with friends, and also acceptable in neutral contexts.
Je préférerais rester à la maison ce soir.
- Conditional tense.
- More polite / soft / tentative: I would rather stay home tonight.
- Good when you want to sound more careful or diplomatic.
So if you are gently refusing an invitation, Je préférerais rester à la maison ce soir often sounds more tactful.
The verb rester means to stay / to remain. It emphasizes not moving from a place:
- rester à la maison – stay at home
- aller à la maison – go (to) home
- être à la maison – be at home
In your sentence, the speaker is choosing not to go out, but to stay where they are (or to spend the evening at home):
- Je préfère rester à la maison ce soir.
I’d rather stay home tonight.
If you said Je préfère aller à la maison ce soir, it would sound like:
- I’d rather go home tonight (as opposed to going somewhere else), which is a different nuance.
Both can often be translated as (at) home, but there is a nuance:
à la maison
- Literally at the house.
- Very common and natural in French.
- Slightly more neutral and can sometimes feel a bit more general.
chez moi
- Literally at my place / at my home.
- More directly emphasizes that it is your place.
In this sentence, these versions are all natural:
- Je préfère rester à la maison ce soir.
- Je préfère rester chez moi ce soir.
In most everyday contexts in the first person (je), the difference is small. Many speakers use them almost interchangeably here. Chez moi can sometimes sound a bit more personal: at my place.
This is about article and gender:
- maison is a feminine noun: la maison – the house.
- The preposition à
- la maison stays à la maison.
- You cannot drop the article here.
So:
- ✅ à la maison – at home / at the house
- ❌ à maison (ungrammatical)
- ❌ au maison (would mean à le maison, and anyway maison is feminine, not masculine)
The same pattern appears in phrases like:
- à la gare – at the station
- à la plage – at the beach
French ce soir covers both English ideas:
- this evening
- tonight
It usually refers to the evening of today, from the early evening until you go to bed. So all of these are natural translations:
- En vrai, je préfère rester à la maison ce soir.
- Honestly, I’d rather stay home tonight.
- Honestly, I’d rather stay home this evening.
If you want to refer to a specific other evening, you change it:
- ce soir-là – that evening / that night (in the past or future story)
- ce soir-ci – extremely rare in modern speech.
Phonetic-style approximation (in English sounds):
En vrai → roughly: ã vreh
- En: nasal vowel, like on in French bon.
- vrai: vray, final t is silent.
je préfère → roughly: zhuh pray-FAIR
- je: like zhuh.
- pré-: like pray.
- -fère: like fair with a slightly more open vowel.
rester → roughly: ress-TAY
- Stress on the last syllable -ter.
à la maison → roughly: ah lah may-ZON
- maison: may-zon, with a nasal on at the end.
ce soir → roughly: suh swar
- soir: swar, final r is pronounced in French.
Liaison:
- There is no mandatory liaison between rester and à:
you usually say rester à as ress-tay ah, not ress-tay-rah. - Each word stays fairly separate here, apart from normal French linking in fast speech.
Yes.
- Je préfère rester à la maison ce soir.
is a completely correct and natural sentence:
I’d rather stay home tonight.
Adding En vrai simply adds a subjective, honest tone:
- En vrai, je préfère rester à la maison ce soir.
To be honest, I’d rather stay home tonight.
So En vrai is optional; it changes the tone, not the basic meaning.