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Excusez-moi pour(?) mes questions bêtes...
Est-ce correctement?
Он учит своих сыновей плавать.
Il apprends à nager à ses fils.
Он умеет плавать и всех этому учит.
Il sait nager et il y apprends à tous.
Он научил её(его) плавать.
Il lui a appris à nager.
Here are the corrections.Quote:
Originally Posted by ac220
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spiderkat
Merci beaucoup!
Well, most corrections are simple enough, except, as usual, the one I started the whole exercise for... :)
In other words, à+verb is a kind of a noun and uses direct object pronouns here? Then are they always the same or some verbs are "le" and some are "la"? (Obviously can`t be seen with "apprendre"... Ok, continuing "swimming" theme...)Quote:
Originally Posted by Zubr
Он начинает заниматься плаванием. -> Он это начинает. "Il commence à faire de la natation." would be "Il le commence."? (or "il la commence faire.")
Мне так кажется. Но « Il commence la natation » - « Il la commence », потому что natation - это подлежащее женского рода.Quote:
Originally Posted by ac220
The article (le, la, les} refers to the word that was mentioned previously and without changing gender and number.Quote:
Originally Posted by ac220
Ok, so my example didn't need "à faire" which made it useless for the purpose. My bad, sorry.
My imagination and vocabulary are at their limits, so I'll just ask it. In my original example after your corrections was that "l'" in "l'apprend" contracted "le" or contracted "la"? Is it always the same or it might depend on something? I really have no clue where to look that up.
Again, sorry for an extremely stupid question.
Actually it was okay since to me there are different ways to translate it.Quote:
Originally Posted by ac220
Il commence à faire de la natation.
Il commence à pratiquer la natation.
Il commence la natation.
This is what we call the elision and that's why the apostrophe appears instead of a regular le/la. But you still have to learn the gender of the words so you know which one (la or le) to choose when the elision doesn't occur.Quote:
Originally Posted by ac220
Il apprend cette leçon. Il l'apprend.
Il étudie cet exercice. Il l'étudie.
Previous variant deleted. I'm sorry.
I just can't explain what I mean... It seems I'm a certified idiot who can't ask a simple question in any language and be understood correctly. :-(
If "apprendre" didn't start with a vowel, what would be in that example, "le" or "la" and why?
Those two personal pronouns are used as direct object pronouns to replace the real direct object word in a previous sentence and since in French there are two genders, so articles, pronouns, nouns, adjectives, etc., all have to agree to the same gender when they are linked all together, just like in Russian.Quote:
Originally Posted by ac220
Those pronouns work the same way you would use lui/à lui/à elle when they replace the name of a person or animal. Let's try with different examples and some colors.
Pierre donne un livre à Marie. Pierre lui donne un livre. Pierre le donne à Marie. Pierre le lui donne.
Marie donne un livre à Pierre. Marie lui donne un livre. Marie le donne à Pierre. Marie le lui donne.
Pierre donne une fleur à Marie. Pierre lui donne une fleur. Pierre la donne à Marie. Pierre la lui donne.
Marie donne une fleur à Pierre. Marie lui donne une fleur. Marie la donne à Pierre. Marie la lui donne.
Lui can be used to replace the name of a person or animal whether it is masculine or feminine.
Le is used to replace a masculine noun only.
La is used to replace a feminine noun only.
In English there's no masculine or feminine nouns but only neutral. So instead of "le/la" you'll see "it".
Pierre gives Marie a book. Pierre gives her a book. Pierre gives it to Marie. Pierre gives it to her.
Marie gives Pierre a book. Pierre give him a book. Marie give it to Pierre. Marie gives it to him.
Pierre gives Marie a flower. Pierre gives her a flower. Pierre gives it to Marie. Pierre gives it to her.
Marie gives Pierre a flower. Marie gives him a flower. Marie gives it to Pierre. Marie gives it to him.
In Russian it should look like that if I didn't make any mistakes or get everything all mixed up.
Пётр даёт Марии книгу. Пётр ей даёт книгу. Пётр её даёт Марии. Пётр ей её даёт.
Мария даёт Пётру книгу. Мария ему даёт книгу. Мария её даёт Пётру. Мария ему её даёт.
Пётр даёт Марии цветок. Пётр ей даёт цветок. Пётр его даёт Марии. Пётр ей его даёт.
Мария даёт Пётру цветок. Мария ему даёт цветок. Мария его даёт Пётру. Мария ему его даёт.
More examples with and without the elision. Maybe you'll understand the whole thing better.
Il apprend cette leçon (feminine). Il l'(feminine) apprend.
Il chante une chanson (feminine). Il la (féminine) chante.
Il étudie cet exercice (masculine). Il l'(masculine) étudie.
Il lit un livre (masculine). Il le (masculine) lit.
Тебе сейчас всё ясно.... и, конечно, всё понял... или нет. :-)
Well, ok, this is really helpful, (at this stage, anything to do with French pronouns is extremely helpful to me) but it isn't really what I meant. And I believe you've got everything right in Russian part, at least considering your goal of preserving word order for the ease of comparison. Definitely no worse than I can do something like that at 5 am. :) Except one little thing. If I recall correctly declined forms of "Пётр" should lose the tréma. Пётр, Петра, Петру, Петра, Петром, о Петре.
It's easy to see what gender a person is (relatively). You can look up grammatical gender of a regular noun in a dictionary. But how to determine gender of a thing that isn't really a noun? Like "nager" in apprendre à nager?
In English they're either neuter or are replaceable by "do it" or may be dropped depending on whether they're gerunds, infinitives etc.:
Can he swim across the river?
Yes, he can do it.
Yes, he can ____.
Would you like to go home ?
Yes, I would like it.
Yes, I would ____.
He started painting the fence an hour ago and does it now.
and so on.
In Russian, they're very similar to English, except that "это" is a demonstrative pronoun, not personal. (As if it would only be possible to say "do this," but not "do it" in English.)
Он сможет переплыть реку?
Он сможет это.
Он сможет ___.
Хочешь ли ты идти домой?
Да, хочу ___.
Он начал красить забор час назад и сейчас продолжает это делать.
It's a bit difficult to think up bilingual examples for this because infinitives aren't used like that for the same things in all three languages...
Anyway, in French there's no real grammatical neuter, so whatever such a verb phrase is replaced with should be either masculine or feminine. And for all I know it may use a completely different type of pronouns for the purpose, like Russian does... But no one bothered to write anything on the subject. Or so it seems to me. Maybe I just don't know where to look.
I'm just trying to figure out what troubles you exactly because it's still unclear to me. So let's keep trying.Quote:
Originally Posted by ac220
This is a verb and verbs don't have genders. Maybe this is where the problem lies. Maybe it's confusing to you because you want to see a gender where there's none. Maybe you're talking about the neutral "le" which has nothing to do with those "le/la/les". For instance, "Il peut le faire tout seul" or "Il le sait déjà" or "Vous le savez comme moi" or "Partez, il le faut".Quote:
Originally Posted by ac220
Some of those examples don't seem right to me. If I may.Quote:
Originally Posted by ac220
I think you should just try to learn French in an easier way without looking at how it is said in English. Maybe it's a bit too early in your learning of this language to dissect too much and too deep the syntaxes in French. Do you think this site http://www.synapse-fr.com/grammaire/GTM_0.htm would help you?
Tu peux considérer « à nager » comme une nominalisation du verbe et dans ce cas ce syntagme est à traiter comme un masculin (en français le masculin joue le rôle du neutre). Et naturellement toutes les nominalisations sont traitées comme des masculins, par exemple dans « Il faut que vous partiez », on réfère à la proposition subordonnée « que vous partiez » au moyen de le : « Il le faut ».
Thanks. :) Yours are definitely more grammatical and natural.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spiderkat
I'm not that sure about Russian ones, in fact. :lol: Attempts to write coherently at 5 am, while being extremely frustrated by one's own inability to explain what exactly you mean usually don't turn out that well. :(
It indeed could be easer to just use French examples, but since my attempts to say anything but very basic SVO sentences often produce complete gibberish :-( I just couldn't really do that.
Merci! Je crois que je t'ai compris...Quote:
Originally Posted by Zubr
Естественно надо будет ещё разобраться с тем, где во французком такие замены возможны, а где нет, но это уже детали. Принцип понятен.
Ещё раз спасибо всем. :)