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2 questions regarding French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| mishels Diglot Newbie Israel Joined 5785 days ago 39 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew*, English Studies: German, French | Message 1 of 4 18 May 2009 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been learning French with Pimsleur, which means there are many things that I know the sound of but not how they are written or even if they are one or two words.
Here are two of the ones I still haven't figured out. Quand -alieu- la soiré? Quand -aulieu- la soiré? in the meaning of when the evening party takes place and wwhen will it take place. I the fact that the beginning is the thing that changed makes me think that the sound is actually 2 words but sadly I don't really know. I found out through google that "au lieu" is 'instead' but I don't thing that was the meaning there. Maybe it's the same thing. Another expression that I've heard for the fisrt time today in Pimsluer 3, lesson 17 is something like that: Nous sommes -entrain- de parler de... It sounded to me like it is two words and that the expression is something like "we are on the speaking train about ... which sounds kind of a logical expression. But asking someone who knows French about this left them rolling on the floor laughing and saying that it's one word and has nothing to do with a train. On the other hand, they couldn't spell it for me, so I'm stuck. Anyone to the rescue? Mishel. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6036 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes  5 sounds | Message 2 of 4 18 May 2009 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Quand a lieu la soirée "a" is the 3rd person singular of the verb avoir. Also, I think the last word should be spelled "soirée" in this case.
Nous sommes en train de parler de... The expression <être> en train de <faire quelque chose> means "to be in the process of doing something". It roughly corresponds to the -ing form in English. "en train" can also mean travelling by train. The context usually makes it clear which is the right meaning; The word "train" is fairly general in French, it can also mean "pace". My (ungrounded) theory is that the original meaning was the one corresponding to the -ing form. When trains were invented people ascribed the word for progressing/pacing to the machines and so a new noun was coined. Then again, maybe not ;). Edited by Sennin on 18 May 2009 at 7:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mishels Diglot Newbie Israel Joined 5785 days ago 39 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew*, English Studies: German, French | Message 3 of 4 18 May 2009 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
I know about "a", I didn't know about "lieu". I checked it out now and apparently it means "location" so "a lieu" would be "has the location" or tranlated not literally "takes place". Now I get it. I don't remember what was the sentence with -aulieu- but after understanding what it means I suspect that it was something like that "ils ont lieu a samedi", meaning what I thought was a -au- sound was actually -ont- so that the subject must have been plural. I guess I'll stumble upon it again in future lessons, so theni'll know for sure.
I'm sticking to the train as the "I have boarded the train and it has started moving so I'd appriciate it if you won't insist on me jumping of the train just to listen to what you have to say!" meaning of the expression. It is an expression, and as such certainly shouldn't be taken literally, but the imagery is always nicely connected somehow to the meaning behind it. If you think about it, you also have this same expression in English, but only one one thing... about thinking. You can say "The loud noise broke my train of thought". So in French it would be "I was in the train of thinking". I'd like to believe there is some connection between the two expressions :) Thanks for the quick reply, Mishel. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Masked Avenger Triglot Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6136 days ago 145 posts - 151 votes Speaks: English, French*, Danish Studies: Finnish, Latin | Message 4 of 4 19 May 2009 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Maybe it is just me, but I'd prefer using the future tense for 'Quand a lieu la soirée'.
'Quand aura lieu la soirée' definitely sounds better. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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