Calling on the phone

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Permalink Reply by stella on June 5, 2009 at 1:31pm

sentences are ok except that you don't translate "on" by "sur" at the end of the phrase.
so it's je peux vous appeler plus tard, et je vous appellerai plus tard.

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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on June 5, 2009 at 3:02pm

Thanks french flower

Shall I call you tomorrow?
Peux-je vous appeler demain ?

Shall I call you later on?
Peux-je vous appeler plus tard?

May I call you tomorrow?
Peut-être je vous appeler demain ?

May I call you later on?
Peut-être je vous appeler plus tard ?

Have I properly translated the words 'may' and 'shall'?
I think it is incorrect to use the word 'peut-être'. Usually 'peut-être' means perhaps.

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Permalink Reply by stella on June 6, 2009 at 3:21am

yes, peut-être is perhaps or maybe. so the translations are:
1- pourrais-je vous appeler demain? (peux-je doesn't exist)
2- pourrais-je vous appeler plus tard?
3- puis-je vous appeler demain?
4-puis-je vous appeler plus tard?
but, ideally, we will use easier "est-ce je pourrais vous appeler, ou, est-ce que je peux vous appeler".
It is less formal.

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Permalink Reply by Jan Loose on June 8, 2009 at 8:42am

Je vous appellerai plus tard sur
Je vous appellerai plus tard sur

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Permalink Reply by Frank on June 23, 2009 at 2:40pm

The 1st and the 2nd ones are absolutely correct.

However, don't abuse of the "sur" word. If you want to literally translate "for sure", use "à coup sûr", as in "Je vous appellerai plus tard, à coup sûr". Although in this case, "Je vous appellerai plus tard, c'est promis" (you make a promise) would sound more natural.

"Je peux" means that you might or that you can, not that you will. So it's not 100% sure. So don't add "sure" or anything that would mean the same thing.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on June 24, 2009 at 11:37am

Frank -- in this case, the word sur was a confusion with the English word on.

In English, it's commn to add certain prepositions to emphasis a particular notion that don't actually carry much meaning per se and aren't always translated. So here, on emphasises "continuation" from the present time, but essentially later on means "later" and the difference is too subtle to usually bother trying to render. (Maybe later on is closer to un peu plus tard, but it's really arguable.)

Another case that crops up is with some verbs of motion, where it's common to encode direction as a preposition in English, but in French the direction is either not encoded at all, or encoded in the choice of verb. For example, it's common in English to say, for example, I'm going up to Scotland for the weekend, they came over from Manchester, I'll be down in Wales. In these cases, it doesn't always add very much to try and translate the preposition. For example, you could say e.g. ils sont venus de Manchester en passant par la montagne if you're desparate to translate the notion of "over", but really the essential meaning is ils sont venus de Manchester.

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