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Help translating some phrases for an email
Hello-
I'm writing an email to a French friend (the daughter in the family I lived with while studying in Paris years ago) and my French (especially my idiomatic French) is quite rusty. I can look up words in the dictionary but I sometimes have trouble putting phrases together appropriately. Can someone help with the following words and/or phrases?
"I learned to speak French with the best French family ever!" I have: "J'ai appris le français dans la meilleure famille française que j'aie jamais connue." Is this OK?
"She just turned [age]" Would this be "Elle vient d'avoir..."?
"He would love to learn to snowboard." I have: "Il voudrait bien apprendre à faire du snowboard."
How do you say "reserved" when referring to a person's temperament? Réservé?
"This will give them a chance to get to know each other and each other's families." (We are discussing a cultural exchange between people who don't yet know each other.)
"I would like to share the beauty of the Alpes with my family." I think I don't use the verb "partager" here. Maybe "connaître"?
"I'm trying to find reasonably-priced apartments in...." I have: "Je recherche des apartments de prix raisonnable à..." Does that work?
Merci bien, tout le monde!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on
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Your suggestions are generally fine. To fill in your gaps:
"This will give them a chance to get to know each other and each other's families." -> I think you can just translate this as "Cela leur donnera l'opportunité de se connaître et de connaître leurs familles (respectives)" -- you don't really need to translate "each other's" literally as the meaning is pretty clear.
I actually think "partager" is actually OK with the meaning you suggest, but you could indeed also use faire connaître, e.g. "J'aimerais faire connaître à ma famille la beauté des Alpes".
In your last example, it's more common to use "à": "des appartements à prix abordables/raisonnables". Of course, you could also just say "des appartements pas trop chers".
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P.S. If you want a "French" way to say "snowboard", you can also say "faire de la planche à neige".
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Key StudentPermalink Reply by Allison L. on -
Thanks so much, Neil, I appreciate it. This is really helpful!
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