Help needed to impress upon a friend in French

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on May 19, 2010 at 5:31pm

Hi Marco. What's the relationship between you and Sophie? Are you more or less the same age? I ask because you address her as tu in one place and vous in another. We need to sort that out. Also, if your relationship is really casual, I'd change regardé to the slang maté.

This part doesn't make sense to me: J'ai regardé un film avec un ami Julie@ Juilia vers cousine française. . What would this be in English? Other than that part, the text has some errors but would be understandable. Just.

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Permalink Reply by Marco DiStefano on May 19, 2010 at 8:31pm

Hi Stu. Sofie is two years younger, it should be tu in both parts. I just watched a film with a friend Julie & Julia about french cousine. is it that bad.?Thanks again. ciao. Marco

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on May 19, 2010 at 10:03pm

Oh, OK I get it. 'Cousine' should be 'cuisine.' OK, here's my shot at it -- but bear in mind I translate in the other direction.

Salut Sophie ! :)) Comment vont les vacances? Quand est-ce que tu rentreras?
Hier j'ai vu un film avec un ami, 'Julie et Julia.' Le film concerne la cuisine française et c'était fantastique! ! Sais-tu comment préparer la boeuf bourguignon? J'ai du bon vin, attaquons aux bons produits français!
Au revoir de New York.

Up to you whether to replace j'ai vu with j'ai maté. Mater is very colloquial -- you wouldn't say it to your grandmother but it isn't actually vulgar. It may be a trap, in that it would indicate more familiarity with French than you in fact have.

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Permalink Reply by Marco DiStefano on May 20, 2010 at 6:31am

Stu, you rock! thanks.

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on May 20, 2010 at 3:05pm

Not quite. LA boeuf should be LE boeuf....

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on May 21, 2010 at 4:57am

In addition to what other people have said, some other things to consider:
- Dernière nuit doesn't make sense in French. Usually you'd say hier soir. (If you litearlly mean "during the previous night", then you could say pendant la nuit dernière, but I don't think that's what you mean here.)
- I personally think materwould be a bit out of place unless you transform the entire passage into that level of colloquialism (for example "quand reviendras-tu?" is actually a little formal, so it doesn't make sense to me to combine this slightly formal wording with a highly colloquial word); I'd stick to vu.
- (faire) cuire means "to cook/boil" in the sense of "to make the ingredients go through the chemical process of cooking/boiling", not usually in the sense of "to prepare". I'd stick to préparer: tu sais préparer le boeuf bourgignon?
- for "let's...", it would be laissons-nous préparer de la nourriture française!, although this construction is a bit biblical (a bit like saying "let us..." rather than "let's..." in English). More usually, you could say Qu'on prépare de la nourriture française! or Préparons/faisons de la nourriture française!, On préparera de la nourriture française!

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on May 21, 2010 at 3:57pm

Merci Neil.
The "teachable moment" (horrible neologism, now appearing all over the place) is that sais-tu comment préparer and sais-tu préparer are the same. English people have difficulty distinguishing connaitre and savoir when learning French. The key is that savoir, in most cases, can be translated as to know how to.

Neil, would you consider sais-tu comment préparer as actually wrong, or merely redundant?

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on May 25, 2010 at 11:36pm

Regarding the difference between savoir and connaître (I guess this would even be worth a new thread), a very basic difference is that connaître can only take a noun phrase, whereas savoir allows other structures. So while you can say je sais/connais son adresse, you can't say je connais où il habite-- it has to be je sais... in this case.

Then in many cases where the object is inanimate, either savoir or connaître is possible in principle, but savoir tends to carry the notion of "deliberately learn", whereas connaître means "learn/get to know by experience, meeting etc".

With regard to savoir followed by an infinitive, my observation would be that for expressing "pure knowledge/ability", it's rare to use comment. Where it's uesd, comment tends to imply a more "active" effort or deliberate action, like it stands for "comment faire pour...", for example:

Elle sait utiliser ce logiciel -- simple knowledge/ability; I think using comment would be rare in this case
Elle sait comment utiliser le maquillage à son avantage -- emphasises a more deliberate action, not just general knowledge

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