Se trouve OR trouve

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Permalink Reply by Marc Vonhalmen on July 13, 2009 at 11:39am

trouver = to find
se trouver = to be, to be situated, to be located
Those are two different verbs! (look in a dictionary, they're really separated)

La Maison Blanche trouve à Washington aux États-Unis. [ Is this wrong?]
Yes, it is. Translation: The White House finds in Washington in the USA..... it makes no sense.

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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on July 13, 2009 at 9:35pm

Thanks Marc

Si vous marchez le long de la rue, vous trouverez ma maison qui a le numéro 100.

If you walk along the street, you will find my house which has the number 100.
My English sentence is correct. I mean that is the way you describe a location of a house, building, etc.

Obviously it is fine to say 'my house is located at number 10 Downing Street' too.
Have I used the verb 'trouver' correctly here?

I know 'aller à pied' stands for walking. Even 'promener' stands for walking.
I am not sure whether 'marcher' is the correct verb.

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Permalink Reply by Marc Vonhalmen on July 13, 2009 at 10:48pm

If you say "Si vous marchez le long de la rue", it's correct, but usually it means that you're walking at the side of the road (you're following the road, but you're not walking on it), so it may sound a bit weird for some people. For instance we use "marcher le long de" to say:
marcher le long de la rivière (you're following the river, but you're walking on the shore, not in the middle of the water)
OR
marcher le long des rails (you're not walking on the rails)
But, as I said, it's okay to say "Si vous marchez le long de la rue" (which means that you're walking on the sidewalk, for instance). A lot of people would actually say it like this. But maybe it would be better to say:
- Si vous suivez cette rue
OR
- Si vous continuez le long de la rue (also using "le long de, here")
But actually "Si vous marchez le long de la rue" is perfectly correct, so I don't know why I'm writing all this ^_^ but maybe it's just to warn you that "marcher le long de quelque chose" means that you're not really walking on this "quelque chose", but at the side of it.

"vous trouverez ma maison qui a le numéro 100" is grammatically correct, but it sounds a bit heavy. We would usually say:
- vous trouverez ma maison au numéro 100 (that's the typical way of saying this)
- vous trouverez ma maison qui porte le numéro 100. (that one sounds weird for the same reason your version sounds weird, but it's just to show you that we use the verb "porter" in this case, not "avoir"). So you could actually just say: "Si vous marchez le long de la rue, ma maison porte le numéro 100" and it would be absolutely correct.

You used "trouver" perfectly. If you want to use "se trouver", you would say:
- ma maison se trouve au numéro 100.

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