Can you help with this phrase?

lol prq tt ces questions? té qui dabord?

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on December 5, 2009 at 9:41pm

Obviously this is from internet chat, full of abbreviations and deliberately atrocious grammar. In English it's:

LOL why all these Qs? And who ru anyway?

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Permalink Reply by Frank on December 6, 2009 at 12:37pm

This is not proper French, but French as written by teenagers, known as kikoolol. But this one is rather easy.

LOL = LOL
prq = pourquoi (why)
tt = toutes (all)
té = t'es (you are)
dabord = d'abord (to start with)

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Permalink Reply by curiousmind on December 12, 2009 at 3:24pm

and mais dis moi stp tu l connais comment??

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Permalink Reply by Frank on December 12, 2009 at 9:06pm

stp = S'il te plaît (please)
l = le / la / les

Please tell me how you met him/her/them

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Permalink Reply by curiousmind on December 14, 2009 at 1:22am

salut tout le monde ...j'espere rencontrer des gens serieux et surtout pas des frimeurs...menteurs...!!

I know part this one says Good day everyone... and to meet serious not sure of the rest...Im sorry, I know no French.

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Permalink Reply by Frank on December 14, 2009 at 12:06pm

Hi folks. I hope to meet responsible people and not liars or people who're just here to show off.

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on December 14, 2009 at 5:15pm

Frank's version is perfectly fine, and it brings up a more general point of interest. There's no present continuous tense in French.

I'd prefer "I'm hoping to meet...." because that's what we'd write in English.

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Permalink Reply by Frank on December 14, 2009 at 5:52pm

There's no present continuous tense in French.

There is. It's the infamous être en train de (+ infinitive).

But isn't not as frequent as in English and doesn't apply to the same situations.

Je suis en train d'espérer ... (a literal translation of "Im hoping to meet...") would rather mean that you're really dying for it to happen.

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on December 14, 2009 at 6:05pm

Hmmmm, I'm not so sure "en train de" is really a present continuous. Isn't "Je suis en train de..." just the equivalent of "I'm in the process of..."?

Of course we'd never say "I'm in the process of hoping...." in either language.

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Permalink Reply by Frank on December 14, 2009 at 6:11pm

Hmmmm, I'm not so sure "en train de" is really a present continuous. Isn't "Je suis en train de..." just the equivalent of "I'm in the process of..."?

Hi Stu,

Yes, "en train de" is roughly equivalent to "be in the process of", so this is some kind of a present continuous.

But English seems uses this tense for a wider range of situation that we do in French.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on December 14, 2009 at 8:49pm

Agreed. For English speakers, a rough guide is that en train de... is appropriate (though not necessarily required) when in English you'd say in the middle of....

(The French phrase en cours is slightly closer to the idea of in the process of, although clearly the concepts are similar.)