#_snowflakeobsidian_

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stoic coralBOT
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Please be patient

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dense gate
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Feel free to ping me cri

foggy drift
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What do you mean exactly by 'sentence structure'? Are you talking about stuff like adverb positioning, the placement of object pronouns, and emphatic structures?

dense gate
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I think so? Let me see if I can find an example

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Okay so I guess a very basic example is "they also study French", but in French it's "Ils étudient aussi le français", so the words are flipped. I just can't wrap my brain around it and often it marks me wrong for it because the sentence structure isn't correct, but I don't know why

foggy drift
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Ah okay yes

dense gate
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Thank you for your patience also cri

foggy drift
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In French, adverbs can come either at the start or the end of a sentence like in English however when it comes to adverbs that modify verbs, French tends to places them after the verb whereas English places them before the verb

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Yesterday, I went to the market.
Hier, je suis allé au marché.

I went to the market yesterday.
Je suis allé au marché hier.

Time adverbs (hier/yesterday, aujourd'hui/today, ce soir/this evening) are placed at the start or end

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pretty clear

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but then we have regular adverbs like « souvent (often) » which denote frequency

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Je vais souvent au marché.
I often go to the market.

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This is really general:
Elle gagne facilement cette course.
She easily wins this race.

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However, English 'betrays' this rule when it comes to compound tenses

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Okay so a quick primer on compound tenses. Compound tenses are tenses where, instead of having just one verb, we have two. Instead of the original verb conjugated in the tense, we instead have an auxiliary verb plus a past participle.

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For example, in English we have 'He spoke' but also 'He has spoken'

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In French, we have « Il parle » and « Il a parlé »

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There's a fair bit of theory that goes into compound tenses but what matters is how English and French treats this unit. I say unit because in compound tenses, you must have both the auxiliary and the past participle; you cannot have one without the other.

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French sees the verb in a compound tense as the auxiliary verb, not the past participle. That's why, in compound tenses, you're likely to find the adverb sitting in-between the auxiliary and the past participle:
« J'ai clairement indiqué mes préférences. »
Because the verb is « avoir » here as the auxiliary, the adverb is placed after that auxiliary. If we switch that to a simple tense, the adverb changes place accordingly:
« J'indique clairement mes préférences. »

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In English, the simple tense would follow this tendency:
'I clearly indicate my preferences.'
But when it's a compound tense, we have a wrinkle:
'I have clearly indicated my preferences.'

dense gate
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This is making sense, thank you!

foggy drift
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So that's one concern out of the way

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Do you understand object pronoun placement?

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ex: Why do we say « je t'aime » and not « j'aime toi » ?

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If you do, are there any other things you're unclear about? Say, why French repeats pronouns like « Je veux partir, moi. » ?

foggy drift
dense gate
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Yeah, actually, that's a good one

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I was thinking about it

dense gate
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So I don't mind learning the why

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You seem to really like teaching, haha

dense gate
foggy drift
foggy drift
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I suspect it's a holdover from Latin because Latin has a soft preference for Subject-Object-Verb

dense gate
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I really like the historic reasons, I just wish modern language learning services would teach it more literally instead of 'understood'

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It's a beautiful way of speaking tbh

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I find also the more I understand the why behind something, the easier it is for me to learn it

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It's why I can't learn Japanese, because there's often just...not really a why behind things, lol

foggy drift
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French doesn't really have that; French doesn't have much of a stress at all so its emphatic structure is different

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For nouns, we can repeat the noun in tonic pronoun form:
I love her [subject emphasis] = Moi, je l'aime.
I love her [object emphasis] = Je l'aime, elle
We can also use « c'est » plus a tonic for that:
I love her [subject emphasis] = C'est moi qui l'aime.
I love her [object emphasis] = C'est elle que j'aime.

For verbs, we can generally add adverbs:
I love her [verbal emphasis] = Je l'aime vraiment.
(Side note: For most verbs you can just use « bien » but for « aimer » it's a bit complicated)

dense gate
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So to stress your name you say 'Moi, je m'appelle [nom]'?

foggy drift
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Yeah

dense gate
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So it'd be like "My name is [name]"

foggy drift
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Exactly

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English has a « c'est » equivalent as well

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I am the one who loves her
She is the one who I love

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though do note the difference in relative pronouns and conjugations

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English relative pronouns are only third person but French relatives follow whatever they replace

dense gate
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Why do you need to stress your name? Is it just like a {other speaker} 'my name is [name]' {you} 'My name is [name]' thing?

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I guess to like...make the conversation more colorful?

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Less bland?

foggy drift
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Well there's a few reasons

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for example you might be introduced among a series of people

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and you wanna make an impression

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You can do that

dense gate
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Okay, so it's more like an 'attention!'?

foggy drift
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In a way sure

dense gate
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Okay, so when you want emphasis on a noun you repeat the noun, and for verbs you use adverbs

foggy drift
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In pronoun form

dense gate
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Can you give me some more examples?

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Of the verb emphasis

foggy drift
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Je veux bien souligner le fait qu'on a pas du tout vu d'autres options.
I want to underline the fact that we've not at all seen any other options.

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J'ai bien remarqué que la porte était mal alignée.
I did notice that the door was misaligned.

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The second example is also an emphatic structure in English where we use do-support

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I noticed that the door was misaligned
I did notice that the door was misaligned

dense gate
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I see, it makes sense, and in English too 🙂

foggy drift
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Do note that emphatic structures can be mixed

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« T'es choqué que ce soit moi qui l'ait fait ? Toi, tu penses que j'en suis pas du tout capable ? »
'You're shocked that I did it? You think I'm not up for it?'

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Literal translation: 'You're shocked that it was me who did it. You think that I'm not at all capable of it?'

dense gate
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Thanks for adding the literal too 🥲 I would've missed so many words if I wrote that

foggy drift
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Any other things you wanna ask?

dense gate
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No, I think I'm good for now!

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Merci beaucoup!!

foggy drift
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aight

fierce abyss