Didn't come

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on August 1, 2009 at 6:09pm

The second is gobbldygook. Don't believe everything you hear from machine translators.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Crack1 on August 1, 2009 at 6:36pm

I didn't use any online translator program.
I just rewrote as I thought the original was not correct.

I want to know why did they write 'venus'. I can't understand it.

Could you tell the flaw in the second sentence?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Frank on August 1, 2009 at 7:06pm

The tense is the "passé composé", using the "être" auxiliary. Therefore, the participle must be plural/singular/masculine/feminine according to the subject.

Ils sont venus
Elles sont venues
Je suis venu
Elle est venue

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Crack1 on August 1, 2009 at 7:58pm

Ils sont venus. They have come or They came
Elles sont venues. They have come or They came. [ Only females]
Je suis venu. I have come or I came.
Elle est venue. She has come or She came.

The original sentence is 'They didn't come'.
It is not 'They haven't come'.

So 'Ils ne sont pas venus' should be 'They haven't come'.

Ils sont venus means 'They have come'.

I am a bit confused here.

I found the original in the online dictiionary.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Frank on August 1, 2009 at 8:20pm

I have come or I came.

Your sex life has no place here. What kind of online dictionary was it?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Frank on August 1, 2009 at 8:32pm

"Ils sont venus" can sometimes be translated as "They have come".
And "They came" can sometimes be translated using the "imparfait" tense : "Ils venaient".

However, there's no strict bijectivity for these tenses in French and English. Neil is the grammar expert here, he can describe the exact rules.

Even in English, this is tricky, because as you know, there are differences between American ("I just came back from NY") and British English ("I've come back from NY").

I have to pass the baton to the grammar guru :)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Crack1 on August 1, 2009 at 9:49pm

Frank

I am 100% sure that the French tense passé composé represents both imperfect and past perfect.

The French tense 'imparfait' is not directly equals to imperfect.

1 The French imparfait means an ongoing action with no specified completion.

2. The French passé composé means one or more events or actions that began and ended in the past .

3. The French imparfait means a habit or some repeated action.

4. The French passé composé means one completed action.

Quand j'avais 100 ans, je voulais être professeur.
When I was 100, I wanted to be a teacher.
[ Today I am 150.]

....................................................................................................................................................................
It seems the French sentence ' Ils sont venus' could be translated into English as either 'They did come' and ' They have come' .

However, I would always translate the French sentence 'Ils sont venus' as 'They have come'. Because it is 'passé composé'

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Frank on August 1, 2009 at 11:15pm

1 The French imparfait means an ongoing action with no specified completion.
3. The French imparfait means a habit or some repeated action.


Not exactly.

"Comment était ta soirée hier ?" - imparfait
"Oh c'était super, la musique était très bonne, le DJ jouait de bons morceaux" - imparfait
"Tous tes amis étaient là ?" - imparfait
"Non, Robert n'est pas venu" - passé composé

There's a specified completion time. It was yesterday. It's over now.
It's not a repeated action. But we still hit the imparfait.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Crack1 on August 1, 2009 at 9:52pm

Frank

I am 100% sure that the French tense passé composé represents both imperfect and present perfect.

The French tense 'imparfait' is not directly equals to imperfect.

1 The French imparfait means an ongoing action with no specified completion.

2. The French passé composé means one or more events or actions that began and ended in the past .

3. The French imparfait means a habit or some repeated action.

4. The French passé composé means one completed action.

Quand j'avais 100 ans, je voulais être professeur.
When I was 100, I wanted to be a teacher.
[ Today I am 150.]

....................................................................................................................................................................
It seems the French sentence ' Ils sont venus' could be translated into English as either 'They did come' and ' They have come' .

However, I would always translate the French sentence 'Ils sont venus' as 'They have come'. Because it is 'passé composé'

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on August 2, 2009 at 3:35am

(1) , (3) more or less (provided you understand "viewed with no specified completion"-- whether it physically was completed or not doesn't matter). But there are plenty of exceptions. Another way of looking at it is that the imperfect "focusses on the middle" of the action. So for example:

Dix heures sonnaient.

essentially means "It was ten o'clock", but it focusses on the "middle" of the point at which it was ten o'clock-- almost as though time is frozen for a second. It's quite hard to render that in English. Similarly:

C'est en 1958 que naissait la Nasa.

Here, it's like you're "foccussing on" or "drawing out" the period of 1958 in your mind. In English, you might say something like "was coming into being", "was in the process of being formed", but in reality, it's quite hard to find a non-clumsy translation here for what is a single word in French, and you might end up just saying "began", "took shape", "was set up" etc.

(2) sort of-- it usually views the action as a completed action, although it could imply uncompleted consequences (the have done meaning in English). For example, if you say: T'as bu trop de vin?, the implication is Are you drunk?-- you're not really referring to the completion of the drinking as such.

(4) I'm not sure that this statement is either true or necessary. If I say e.g. Je l'ai lu et relu, the implication is that I repeatedly did something some unspecified number of times...

Note that such statements are just guides. You'll find exceptions and need to be prepared for them.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on August 2, 2009 at 3:17am

In general, French doesn't make a distinction between "did" and "have done", and hence, not between "didn't do" and "haven't done".

So Ils ne sont pas venus, depending on the context, could mean either "They didn't come" or "They haven't come".

• ▶ Reply