If ''ever'' and ''never'' same in french

hi,

I wanted to write " did I ever hurt my loved ones ? '' so I wrote

ai - je jamais blessé mes proches ?>>

But my teacher who is a native speaker corrected it to

n'ai - je jamais blessé mes proche ? >>

But does not that mean " did i never hurt my loved ones ? "

The dictionary says jamais may mean both ''ever'' and "never" , but i am confused , becoz ''never'' have negative connotations while ''ever'' have more intterogative connotations.

Thanks in advance

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on March 14, 2014 at 12:58pm

I think you are correct and that "ai - je jamais blessé mes proches ?" does actually mean " did I ever hurt my loved ones ? '' .

However the phrase seems a little clumsy to me and I would prefer "Est-ce que j'ai jamais blessé mes proches ?

It could also be that in this case the meanings are so close that your teacher decided it would sound better with the "ne...jamais" construction even though your translation was not actually "wrong".

When choosing what to say or write it is not always literal translations from another language that are most important -although that is a good exercise of course.

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Permalink Reply by Vedas on March 14, 2014 at 9:43pm

Hello,

Georges is right the sentence you teacher gave you is a written form not likely to be heard in a casual conversation.

If jamais bothers you you can also say: Ai je déjà/ Est-ce que j'ai déjà/ blessé mes proches?