Une nuit blanche

I couldn't sleep last night.
1.Je ne pourrais pas dormir hier soir.

The online dictionary translates the English sentence in a different way.
I haven't learnt the words 'une nuit blanche'. Literally it means ' a white night'.
2. J'ai passé une nuit blanche.

How about my the first sentence? Does it pass the test?

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Permalink Reply by Frank on August 4, 2009 at 9:38pm

Hello Crack,

I couldn't sleep last night.
1.Je ne pourrais pas dormir hier soir.

You should use the imparfait here, because it's in the past :

Je ne pouvais pas dormir hier soir

But if it might happen because of some precondition, using the conditional tense is the right thing to do:

Je ne pourrais pas dormir sans ma femme

"Une nuit blanche" means that for some reason, you couldn't sleep at all.

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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on August 4, 2009 at 9:46pm

Frank

Je ne pourrais pas dormir sans ma femme
[ I like your humor.]

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Permalink Reply by Frank on August 5, 2009 at 12:03am

Well... it wasn't supposed to be hilarious... A lot of people can't sleep deeply when they can't take their honey/darling in their arms. My GF is currently on vacation and I'm definitely experiencing this. This is the downside of being in love.

But once again, we're disgressing...

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Permalink Reply by Frank on August 5, 2009 at 12:17am

By the way, "une nuit blanche" isn't necessarily a bad thing. Maybe you really wanted to sleep, but you couldn't. Yep, this is bad.

But if you go to a big bash and have a lot of fun, you will also have "une nuit blanche". And this is pretty cool (unless you have to go to the gig the day after).

Every year, we also have a special event in Paris called "la nuit blanche". Pretty cool as well: http://www.paris.fr/portail/Culture/Portal.lut?page_id=6806