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Frence sentence with "boire" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4472 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes  Speaks: English*, German | Message 1 of 21 08 December 2012 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Here's a sentence from Rocket French:
I understand it. In fact, I've memorized the entire dialogue that it comes from. However, I don't get why it needs the word "de." The sentence literally means, "I have need to drink something." The English "to drink" is an infinitive. English infinitives need "to" in order to be in the infinitive form. However, this is not true of French. In French, just "boire" is the infinitive, right? Or is it actually a noun here, thus requiring "de"? Of course, in English we would not say this in the literal translation. We would say, "I need to drink something." I therefore think you could also say, "Je doit boire quelque chose." Or do I also need "de" in this version too for some reason? If anyone can provide clarification, I would be grateful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 2 of 21 08 December 2012 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's an idiomatic phrase. You just use "J'ai besoin de", like you say "J'ai envie de",
etc. Furthermore, it's not necessarily a verb you're modifying; it's a noun. You could equally well say: J'ai besoin de silence/une pomme de terre/votre mère/etc. Devoir doesn't need de. Don't think too much about literal translations - they're only there to give you an equivalent. Edited by tarvos on 08 December 2012 at 11:25pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4846 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 3 of 21 09 December 2012 at 11:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5534 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 21 09 December 2012 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's great that you noticed this and you were puzzled by it. The ability to notice grammatical oddities will be enormously helpful as you learn French.
But sadly, many of these grammatical oddities won't make much sense in terms of English. If you're reasonably lucky, and you collect some examples, you'll find that they usually make sense in French after a while. :-) As for infinitives, you'll find that they appear in at least 4 different forms in French, depending on the surrounding phrase and what you're trying to say: 1. Bare infinitives like "J'aime boire du lait." 2. Infinitives with de, like "J'ai besoin de boire quelque chose" or "Il est difficile de boire du vin anglais." 3. Infinitives with à, like "Ce vin est facile à boire." 4. Infinitives with pour, like "Je suis trop fatigué pour travailler." (By the basic laws of the Internet, I've probably made at least one mistake above. Corrections welcome.) For now, just keep your eyes open and see if you can figure out the patterns. If you can find an analogy to English, that's great. If not, just accept French on its own terms. It's worth looking for patterns and thinking about them, but don't worry if you can't find any easy answers or explanations. For the easier cases, there's usually an explanation on french.about.com or in a book like Essential French Grammar that will lay out some rules. Edited by emk on 09 December 2012 at 3:15pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 5 of 21 09 December 2012 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The use of prepositions just isn't predictable in French, annoyingly, and it gets more
confusing when you reply to such a sentence with "en/y" (to avoid repetition), and you get them wrong. This is something that massive input and context solve, but often there just really is no good rule. Edited by tarvos on 09 December 2012 at 5:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4472 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 6 of 21 09 December 2012 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks for the detailed explanation. My goal is not to just learn a bunch of French expressions and vocabulary and good pronunciation. I want a full understanding of its grammar. I've noticed language courses sold to the public often go light on grammar, assuming that will intimidate the general public. Maybe the courses are marketed more toward people who just want to gain some basic language abilities for vacationing. That's not what I'm going for. I'm going for a high level of fluency. I majored in German in college and am therefore very familiar with studying a language's grammar in great detail. Rosetta Stone really doesn't teach grammar effectively. They claim to teach it, but their exercises are that show things in context in an attempt to help you pick up the grammar intuitively. IMO that's not enough. The exercises work way better if you have an understanding of the grammar rules. Pimsleur doesn't teach grammar at all. It's all about listening and repeating. I'm not knocking it. The Pimsleur Method is extremely valuable in building core vocabulary and quality pronunciation. It's just not enough on its own. Rocket French actually does teach some grammar in their workbooks. However, I'm noticing they take very slow baby steps. That's fine since the course is designed for the general public, not a university education. It's a good starter for developing understanding, but not for the high level of fluency that I'm going for. I've got the Essential French Grammar book that you mention. It's good. In fact, I think you're the one who recommended it to me. I found it on Amazon for one cent plus 3.99 shipping. Four bucks was well worth it. I've also got French Grammar and Usage by Roger Hawkins and Richard Towell. That one goes in a bunch of detail. I'm hoping a detailed study of both these books will bring me the deep understanding that I need. I'm also participating on the Language 8 web site. That site is terrific. You write a short essay in the language you're learning and then a native speaker comes along and corrects your errors. As payback, you find someone who's written in your native language and you do corrections for him or her. It's helping a lot. The only thing I'm not doing is having regular conversations in French. I live in ultra hicksville Idaho where you NEVER hear anyone speaking French. You hear Spanish pretty often and maybe Mandarin once in a blue moon, but not French. I'll be searching for a Skype partner to converse with in French. That should complete a well-rounded program for getting good at this. I actually hate Skype, but I'll just have to live with it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 21 09 December 2012 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If facile is with à, doesn't that imply that difficile is also with à, emk? Not that I am
sure, but it sounds more logical 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5534 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 21 10 December 2012 at 1:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||
In that case, here's a high-level summary of French infinitives (which I hope is reasonably accurate). Some of these rules can only be specified precisely by listing a page or two of specific verbs and expressions, many of which are rare. I'm only going to give examples of each class, and only list some of the major rules. I'd appreciate any corrections or improvements that anyone wants to offer! - Verbs like aimer, vouloir, espère and pouvoir that carry a sense of "wanting" or which work like English modal verbs tend to take bare infinitives. Many of these can also take que plus a subjunctive subclause, except for espère, which takes an indicative subclause for historical reasons. Souhaiter, irritatingly enough, may be used with either a bare infinitive or possibly de, with no change in meaning, or so my sources tell me. - Verbs like arrêter and empêcher that carrying a sense of "stopping" tend to take de plus an infinitive. - Passive infinitives like Ce vin est facile à boire take à. - A huge number of constructions take either de plus an infinitive or que plus a subclause. The subclause will be in either the indicative or the subjunctive, and you almost never have a choice as to which—just consult a list and use whichever it specifies. (The French subjunctive is actually stupidly easy once you learn about 20 common irregular stems. You just need to memorize which constructs require the subjunctive and you're nearly done.) - You will only see pour plus an infinitive when it carries a clear sense of "for the purpose of", as far as I can tell. - The remaining uses of an infinitive are governed by more specific rules. I can still pick up a newspaper and find one or two new ones that I've never seen before. After a certain point, I think the French are just playing it by ear and using whichever sounds right. The reason why I had been encouraging you to learn as much as possible from context is that the actual rules, if any, are complex, but they have a certain internal logic that's hard to articulate. Personally, I deal with this by looking for patterns, occasionally double-checking a grammar book, and collecting examples in Anki. And then when I read, I look for things that I wouldn't have guessed. But this is a personal preference: Some people want to see the raw data before learning the rules, and others like to have everything laid out as clearly as possible. If you prefer written rules, here's a start. This covers many of the examples I've posted: French infinitive French verbs with prepositions Verbs with de plus an infinitive More verbs with de (some of which may take infinitives) Verbs with à Impersonal expressions (this one's important) If anyone can explain this more clearly, please do so! I still don't know all the rules.
It's a trick. :-) See the Impersonal expressions link above for a detailed explanation. Basically, the first sentence has a dummy subject that doesn't refer to anything at all, and the second sentence is basically a passive infinitive. Look at where the word vin appears each time:
Learning this rule cost me some red ink on lang-8. :-) Edited by emk on 10 December 2012 at 1:39am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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