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French: Why this correction? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4471 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes  Speaks: English*, German | Message 1 of 8 15 August 2013 at 5:49am | IP Logged | |||||
On Language 8, I wrote an essay. I understand the reason behind most of the corrections, but the ones in the following sentence baffle me. My original sentence was:
It was corrected as:
"Je" is the subject and "reçois" is the conjugated verb with "autre" being the direct object. Why then is "en" needed contracted together with "je"? The sentence already has an object. Also, why was "de" deleted before "besoin"? I've seen it over and over that "avoir besoin de" is used together to mean "to need." I think I get that "dont" is a more appropriate conjunction than "que" in this case. In general I'm having a rough understanding the purpose behind contractions involving "en." I tried to seach about.com for an information page, but I got a page full of prepositional uses of "en" that did not involve contractions. If anyone knows of a good explanatory page, I would love to check it out. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5600 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 2 of 8 15 August 2013 at 6:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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The expression is "avoir besoin de", not "avoir de besoin" and "dont" is the relative forme of "de".
Je n'ai pas besoin de l'autre --> l'autre dont je n'ai pas besoin (J'ai l'autre --> l'autre que j'ai) I cannot explain properly, why you need "ne", but it sounds better to say "I get another one of them" in French. Edited by Cabaire on 15 August 2013 at 6:16am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4340 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 3 of 8 15 August 2013 at 8:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm pretty sure the construction "que j'ai de besoin' is sometimes used in Quebec in
informal contexts. I won't get into a political discussion on whether or not this is correct, but I will say that the Standard French way of saying the same thing is "dont j'ai besoin'. Whenever we deal with the word "de", we often encounter "dont" and "en" as well. "Dont" is a bit like "whose" or "of which". Think of your sentence like this: "A year later, I receive another of which I have no need." A little rigid, but closer to the French way of saying it. The confusion here really stems from the use of the verbal phrase "avoir besoin de" versus the verb "to need" in English. There is no need for a preposition in English, but there is a need in French. Because of this difference, the use of conjunctions also differs between the two languages. "The book that I need" vs "The book of which I have need." As for "en", I don't know of an English equivalent. "En" is used in general when you do not want to repeat a word that follows "de" or a number. In this case, although we wouldn't say it this way in English, the "en" is replacing whatever you received. If it were a message, then the full sentence would be "Un an plus tard je reçois un autre DE ces messages dont je n'ai pas besoin." "A year later, I receive another OF those messages of which I have no need." The only difference now is if you want to cut out "of those messages", you need to add "en" in French. It's maybe a good idea to focus only on a few verbs that tend to use these constructions at first. Familiarize yourself with them and it should be easier to apply that knowledge to other verbs later. Just remember to look for "de". A couple examples to help. I personally like to make my translations as literal as possible, so I often look for English equivalents, of the French verbs, that use "of". This makes the the conversion of English to French more easy in my opinion. The only problem is that sometimes there isn't a good translation or I have to use some more... antiquated ways of speaking. -avoir besoin de (to need, to have need of) 1. J'ai besoin de trois dictionnaires. = J'en ai besoin de trois. I need three dictionaries. ; I need three. (In this case the 'de' stays because we're dealing with numbers. When dealing with numbers, if the original sentence contains "de", we keep it. If it doesn't, then we don't add one: "Je veux trois dictionnaire. = J'en veux trois.) 2. Le dictionnaire n'est pas là. J'ai besoin de ce dictionnaire. = Le dictionnaire dont j'ai besoin n'est pas là. The dictionary is not there. I have need of that dictionary. = The dictionary of which I have need is not there. -parler de (to talk about, to speak of) 1. Est-ce que tu lui as parlé de ma sœur? = Est-ce que tu lui en as parlé? Did you speak of my sister to him? = Did you speak (of that) to him? 2. Le film était intéressant. Je t'ai parlé de ce film. = Le film dont je t'ai parlé était intéressant. The movie was interesting. I spoke to you of the movie.= The movie of which I spoke (to you) was interesting. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 4 of 8 15 August 2013 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
No. The direct object is the whole noun phrase "un autre [noun]". Unlike English, if you remove a noun from an indefinite noun phrase, you need "en" to replace it. That's why you'll have phrases like "j'en veux deux", "j'en ai du bon", etc. As for the contraction, je always becomes j' before a vowel.
As you said, it's "besoin de", not "de besoin" (leaving aside dialectal variations). "Dont" is the conjuction used for noun phrases beginning with "de". 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4471 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 5 of 8 15 August 2013 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, thanks to everyone for the thorough explanations. Sizen, I'm saving and memorizing the examples you gave. I agree that thoroughly learning a few simple examples will help as a springboard to more complicated uses of these aspects of the language.
An update: For anyone else out there learning these same topics, I'll share these links that I found. About.com has a terrific explanation of relative pronouns, including dont, here: http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/relativepronouns.htm The page about dont is here: http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/relativepronouns_4.htm I'm going to go through and learn every single one of them via their examples and quizzes. I just found a way to get a lot better. Edited by Spinchäeb Ape on 15 August 2013 at 7:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 6 of 8 18 August 2013 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I came across this picture (found on a French website) of an ad that says "Prenez ce que vous avez besoin"
-- which you now know is ungrammatical... Post-it 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 7 of 8 18 August 2013 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The sentence below that also lacks the correct hyphen...
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 8 of 8 18 August 2013 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
In-deed. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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