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French command form | ||
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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 6 21 December 2012 at 4:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I have a question about the command form in French. My grammar book, Essential French Grammar, by Seymour Resnick says to take the Vous form of a verb and just use that without saying Vous. For example: Parlez! My grammar book is very small and only covers the basics. Is this the only command form? German has command forms for you-formal, you-informal, and you-plural. Those would be for the same example: Sprechen Sie!, Sprich!, and Spricht!. I know the You-plural form must not exist since French doesn’t have an equivalent to German’s “ihr”. However, would someone ever take the “tu” conjugation of a verb and use it in the command? For example: Parles! Or is the command always just the Vous form?
Finally, on occasion a German might use the plain infinitive as kind of a generic command form. For example, a cop is knocking on the door demanding that it be opened and instead of saying, “Machen Sie auf,” as you would expect from the standard formal command, he might just say, “aufmachen.” Do the French also sometimes use a plain infinitive as a command? 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 2 of 6 21 December 2012 at 4:49am | IP Logged | ||
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See this 3 page article for how to deal with tu and nous. I'm not aware of the French using the bare infinitive as a command.
In general, french.about.com is extremely useful for things you can't find in Essential French Grammar. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 201128114 Triglot Newbie Canada https://learniceland Joined 4759 days ago 6 posts - 14 votes Speaks: French*, English, Icelandic Studies: German, Spanish | Message 3 of 6 21 December 2012 at 5:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Bare infinitives can only be used in some contexts to denote a command:
Lire attentivement. Écrire lisiblement. etc. You would see that on an application form, for example. Nobody ever expresses a command in such a way when they are speaking. If I want to say "speak!", there are two possibilities: Parlez! - this is the second-person singular (formal) or the second-person plural Parle! - this is the second-person singular (note that there is no "s") So a mother ordering her kid to eat his soup would say: Mange ta soupe! (no "s"!) If she had not one but two unruly kids: Mangez votre soupe! Edited by 201128114 on 21 December 2012 at 5:27am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5432 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 4 of 6 21 December 2012 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Things are a lot more complex than this. First of all, you must distinguish between the imperative mood form and the multiple ways of indicating commands and orders in French. Nearly all grammar books mix the two up.
The imperative mood has two forms for vous and tu as pointed out. But there is a number of additional ways of indicating orders, commands and instructions. These include: 1. the infinitive, as already pointed out 2. use of veuillez.., as in: Veuillez attendre derrière la ligne blanche 3. use of prière de.., as in: Prière de répondre dans les plus brefs délais. 4. use of vous êtes priés de..., as in: Vous êtes priés de signaler toute erreur. 5. use of pronoun on... as in: On ne fait pas ça, les enfants ! 6. use of intonation, usually with verb aller, as in: Tu vas faire ce que je dis. 7. use of il faut, as in: Il faut que vous veniez tout de suite. There are a couple of other very formal forms such as: Ayez la bonté de...and Ayez l'obligeance de..that I won't bother with. All of these are covered on a page of the language wall chart calendar to be found at Language Calendar Edit: I had forgotten the nous imperative form, as in: allons-y, buvons Edited by s_allard on 21 December 2012 at 9:37pm 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 5 of 6 22 December 2012 at 12:01am | IP Logged | ||
The imperative plural of the German word "sprechen" is "sprecht!". And if French doesn't have an equivalent of German "ihr", what does "vous" mean? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nonneb Pentaglot Groupie SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4753 days ago 80 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English*, Ancient Greek, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, Hungarian, French | Message 6 of 6 22 December 2012 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
I believe the point he's making is that French has no separate informal second person plural, although German does. "Vous" is formal, in singular and plural, so I associate it more with German "Sie." However, when German was using "ihr" as the second person singular polite form, it would have mapped more precisely onto the French "vous." Ultimately though, trying to say what words are equivalent to what others in different languages is hardly an exact science. So long as everyone is using it correctly, it doesn't matter how they structure the connections in their head. Edited by nonneb on 22 December 2012 at 2:45am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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