Wrapping ne around reflexive

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on June 11, 2011 at 4:00am

I don't quite understand your first sentence-- what are you trying to say in this case?

 

In the second, your word order is correct, but remember that reflexive verbs always use être, so it would be il s'est tué.

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Permalink Reply by Ray on June 11, 2011 at 1:03pm

Oh! I didn't know that! Thank you very much or Merci beaucoup. I'm just trying to rocket beyond what the school's teaching cuz the school's so slow! J'apprends y et en maintenant. Je n'apprends l'imperfect, ou futur.

First sentence "Il ne veut pas nous être comme ça." means he doesn't want us to be like this. sentence order and stuff's probably messed up there, so what do I do?

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on June 11, 2011 at 7:19pm

OK, now I understand.

 

This is a slightly more difficult to say in French, because to translate literally "He doesn't want us to be like this", you would use yet another form of the verb called the subjunctive. (The subjunctive is basically the equivalent of English constructions like "him to VERB", "us to VERB", "for them to VERB" etc, where you don't have a "normal" subject and verb, but rather "me/you/him" etc followed by "to" followed by the verb, and where you then use that construction as the subject/object of another verb, if that makes any sense.) So for example, your sentence would become:

 

  Formal: Il ne veut pas que nous soyons ainsi.

  Informal speech: Il ne veut pas qu'on soit comme ça.

 

As you may have been taught, the "nous" form is quite formal, so if you use that, then "ainsi" is a more formal way than "comme ça" of saying "like this" or "like that".

 

So, that would be literally how you'd say your sentence. But it is introducing a whole new area of grammar that you may want to avoid at this stage.

 

So one way to work round this could be to say something like:

 

  He doesn't want        to see us           like this.

  Il ne veut pas          nous voir     comme ça/ainsi.

 

This has more or less the same meaning, and avoids the subjunctive until you've had chance to be come familiar with it later on.

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Permalink Reply by Ray on June 11, 2011 at 11:23pm

i was taught this thing like "command words" the teacher called it. And it was like

Be nice.

Sois gentil.

Is that somewhat related to the subjunctive? Great, the subjunctive seems to be the hardest part. It'll take a while to learn, so going to learn other stuff first.

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Permalink Reply by Ray on June 12, 2011 at 2:12pm

Actually, do I put the reflexive part (me,te) on the first or second verb, or the infinitive if there's one. And if I'm writing a negative, do I put it around both, for example:

Il nous donne

becomes

Il ne nous donne pas.

 

Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on June 12, 2011 at 3:59pm

The word order Il ne nous donne pas is correct.

 

Incidentally, the term "reflexive" is usually only used in cases where the two pronouns refer to the same person (so if it was e.g. Nous nous donnons, je me donne or Il se donne).

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