French Language

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!

How to say to "conjugated verb" then "regular verb" again? Please fix my mistakes.

Pour exemple, je dirais dans ma papier.
"J'ai à passer l'aspirateur tout les jours" - I have to vacuum every day.
Also.. how would you say
"I have to clean the toilets" - It would be "J'ai à nettoyer les toilettes?"

Would this be correct? Is there any better way to say it?
More often used phrase in french countries please would help.

I often say à to say "to" then a "verb"? Is this a bad habit?

Merci beaucoup a l'avance.

Views: 296

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Hello Michael,
First, what did you mean with "ma papier" ? Papier is masculine, so it is "mon papier", but it is an argotic idiom only used by journalists.
There are 2 means of saying what you want :
- je dois nettoyer les toilettes
- j'ai les toilettes à nettoyer (note the inversion)
In the second one, the construction is similar to the sentence "i have fruits to eat", and not "i have to eat fruits".
Hope you understand.

Thank you very much! Thank you thank you!Thank you thank you!Thank you thank you!Thank you thank you!Thank you thank you!Thank you thank you!

 

That helped me a lot! :D

Saying à is a bad habit because all verbs mean "to ____" like manger: TO eat or chanter: TO sing.

"I have to vacuum every day" would be: Je dois passer l'aspirateur toute les jours.

Notice my use of the helping verb devoir which means to have to,  or must. Toute also has an e on the end.

"I have to clean the toilets" is: Je dois nettoyer les toilettes. 

Always remember to use the verb devoir (it was conjugated as dois) to say that you have to do something. Also, remember not to use à before a verb because the word "to" is already included in it when it is in its infinitive (regular) form.

I'm not quite sure about the logic of deciding to use or not use a particular construction on the basis of its translation in another language. In French, if you use avoir with an infinitive, à is inserted and it's a perfectly acceptable, idiomatic construction.

 

I suspect it's also true, as others have previously pointed out, using devoir is more common in the "objectless" case (e.g. J'ai à travailler, rather than J'ai beaucoup de travail à faire: the latter would be perfectly usual I think). But it doesn't have anything to do with the reason you mention.

Hello ABC,

Notice :) that Toute les jours is incorrect. It is tous les jours. Toute is for feminine singular.

- Je dois passer l'aspirateur tous les jours

- Je dois passer l'aspirateur toute la journée

 

Hello Neil,

J'ai beaucoup de travail à faire can be reduced to simply J'ai beaucoup de travail.

 

Ed -- They express more or less the same thing, but I guess though that the à faire emphasises the urgency of having to complete the work: J'ai beaucoup de travail et je l'ai à faire (pour demain).

RSS

Follow BitterCoffey on Twitter

© 2024   Created by Neil Coffey.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service