#il fait / godly
vagrant vine
shadow hinge
Well found a time example:
It is morning = c'est le matin.
It is daylight = il fait jour
I don't understand when I should use "it is..." vs "he makes...".
frosty bison
i've heard people say this, even people who should know better
but i've never actually seen any evidence than "why else would they say it like that?"
probably the more truthful answer and anyway the more useful answer is that il acts as a dumby pronoun broadly in french
a dumby pronoun is a pronoun that doesn't actually replace anything, the example in english is "it is raining". What's raining? It. it has no exact meaning
the same thing with "il pleut" in french
or "il faut..." or "il y a..."
ce/ça can be used with être as a dumby pronoun more or less, but with a verb like faire, you use il
il fait soleil, il fait beau, etc.
it's just the way you describe the weather in french, there's no deeper meaning to it
it's possible there is some (very slight) theological influence, but it's not really something which actively explains anything in the language, if that makes sense
shadow hinge
So just the way things are, like gendered nouns, "75" = "60 + 10 + 5", and "3:40pm" = "16 minus 20"?
I guess I still need to come to terms with how language in general works. ie there are rules but they're bent all the time
frosty bison
not sure what you mean
shadow hinge
I mean, I try to follow a pattern for "it is...", but then find out I should be using "he makes/does..." when talking about weather. And the reason is "just because".
frosty bison
when you ask "why do they say it like that?" what kind of answer are you expecting? We can try to explain how a concept works in a language which I've done above, but it seems that these kinds of questions often ultimately boil down to "but why don't they simply speak like we do?"
shadow hinge
Yeah that's what I'm agreeing to, as in it's just how it works in another language.
frosty bison
I mean, I try to follow a pattern for "it is...", but then find out I should be ...
well, it turns out that French isn't based on English, so following a pattern of how you say something in English won't teach you French
otherwise, you wouldn't have to learn anything, would you
shadow hinge
Yeah
frosty bison
in french, we describe the weather with faire not être
shadow hinge
Are there other examples I could look up? Like aside from weather, what other things I might describe with il fait?
frosty bison
use a dictionary like wordreference.com
mostly weather, but there are some set phrases
shadow hinge
Merci beaucoup, I didn't know WR can answer my question like that.
frosty bison
otherwise, "il fait" can mean tons and tons of things when it means "he/it makes/do"
native brook
So just the way things are, like gendered nouns, "75" = "60 + 10 + 5", and "3:40...
"16 minus 20" does not happen
"Moins [le]" is for 12h time, not 24h time. There can be a decent bit of overlap in usage but this isn't one that I've ever seen, 24h rules tend to bleed into 12h rather than the other way around
English does the same thing, "20 to four" or even "twenty to" if the hour is clear enough
"fifteen" is literally just modified "five ten" and so is "fifty", and we just know whether it's multiplication or addition by how "ten" is modified. But that's not how anyone actually reads the language, those are just seen as numbers on their own
French just used to use a base 20 system, same as english did ("four score and [number]" can still be encountered as remnants of that system) and it got mixed in with the rest
native brook
For 12h time
shadow hinge
So for 24h it's more "16 and 40"?
native brook
Literally "16 hour 40"
Usually written out as 16h40
"et demie" is classically 12h but I don't think it'd surprise me if it made its way into 24h a bit
Midi/minuit are classically 12h but can be mixed with 24h
"Pile" I don't think is linked to 12h or 24h it just means "exactly"
Moins & le quart are not used in 24h though