Discuss and learn French: French vocabulary, French grammar, French culture etc.
French Vocab Games app for iPhone/iPad French-English dictionary French grammar French vocab/phrases
For the latest updates, follow @FrenchUpdates on Twitter!
Tags:
Only the first one is acceptable. The second one is not french :)
No ,your second example is completely unacceptable , Robert (go to the back of the class ! )
Not really. You mean you "made him start to use homeopathy"?
Your French sentence makes no sense to me.
You could have said
"Je lui ai conseillé à utiliser l'homéopathie"
If you want to say something like "I started him on a homeopathy course" you might say perhaps
"Grâce a moi ,il s'est mis à utiliser l'homéopathie"or "C'est moi qui l'ai poussé à utiliser l'homéopathie"
It's "Je lui ai conseillé d'utiliser l'homéopathie" instead of "Je lui ai conseillé à utiliser l'homéopathie"
Thanks.That is a weakness of mine.
If one adds 'être' to 'se mettre à' that doesn't form the passive present but the active passé composé, 's'être mis à'.
Robert, I think the closest of your uncorrect sentences is 'faire se mettre qqn à quelque chose', e.g. 'Je l'ai fait se mettre à l'homéopathie' (p.composé) or ' Je le fait se mettre à l'homéopathie' (present) which are completely correct.
The pronominal constructions including the semi-auxiliary 'faire' don't express passive voice. They express what is called in linguistics causative voice. In the example above : I caused the fact that he started homeopathy, or something like that. Actually I think that passive voice is impossible with reflexive pronominal verbs for logical reasons. So using 'faire' in causative sentences is a solution to express a sort of passivity.
© 2025 Created by Neil Coffey. Powered by