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Fils de rebelle; Yarns of rebellion
Nous sommes les heritiers de cette fantastique aventure que fut une Amerique d'abord presque entierement francaise.
We are the heirs of this fantastic adventure that was America first almost of entirely Frenchmen/Frenchwomen.
Merci!
Replies to This Discussion
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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on -
We are the heirs of to this fantastic adventure that was America :at first almost of entirely Frenchmen/Frenchwomen French.
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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on
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You could also consider translating "fut" as something like "represented by". Using a passive verb gets you round the problem of the verb position in English:
"We are the heirs to the fantastic adventure represented by an initially almost entirely French America".
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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on -
Why is it "que fut" and not "qui fut" ?
Is "qui fut" wrong here?
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No, it's que. You can see it like this: underlyingly, the sentence would be:
Nous sommes les heritiers de cette fantastique aventure qu'une Amerique d'abord presque entierement francaise fut.
where the underlined bit is actually the subject, not the object of the relative clause. However, it's generally considered inelegant to leave the verb-- especially a non-emphatic short verb-- "dangling" at the end of a relative clause in this way. So instead, the subject and verb are inverted. (This is sometimes referred to as "stylistic inverstion"-- the syntax is slightly different compared to the inversion that you get e.g. in interrogatives.)
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