Savoir and connaitre

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on September 1, 2009 at 10:11am

It's not so much that it's English-- it's that pouvoir it coincides with one of the uses of "can" in English, and savoir coincides with another. In English, if you say:

"I can make coffee."

this could either mean "I know how to make coffee" or "I am offering to make coffee". In French, using savoir has the first meaning, while pouvoir has the second:

Je sais faire du café.
I can make coffee = i.e. I know how to boil water etc
Je peux faire du café (si tu veux)
I can make coffee (if you want) = i.e. I'm offering to make some coffee.

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Permalink Reply by venus on August 29, 2009 at 6:32am

wow! Really good explanations !
Thank you very much!
It helps a lot!

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Permalink Reply by selisha monica woods on August 29, 2009 at 7:12pm

savoir is to know a fact
and connaitre is to know a person

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on September 1, 2009 at 10:04am

Be careful of this-- it's vaguely true, but not completely! With the cases where savoir is used with a "fact", connaître can also be used and is sometimes more common. For example, the two verbs are pretty much interchangeable in these cases (some speakers might prefer one or the other):

Tu connais/sais son numéro?
Do you know is phone number?
Je ne connais/sais pas son adresse.
I don't know his address.

Fundamentally, savoir differs in that it allows its object to be a verb phrase-- either an infinitive as Frank has said, or in fact also an indirect question (e.g. je ne sais pas à quelle heure il rentre). So here, for example, the two sentences mean pretty much the same thing, but the choice of verb is determined by the structure:

J'aimerais connaître son opinion.
I'd like to know his opinion.
J'aimerais savoir quelle est son opinion.
I'd like to know what his opinion is.

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