Find English Teachers
Eire_Craig
Aidez-moi I'm so bad at French !!
However overcrowded the beaches are, at least we know which of the two has the better restaurant.
My attempt: Si surpeuplé que les plages soient, au moins on sait laquelle de plages a le meilleur restaurant.
I'm 100% sure that my attempt is incorrect, can someone help me ? I have an exam on Friday and I'm stressing out :(
Dec 17, 2012 10:59 AM
Answers · 4
Du calme !!!
Ton français est plus que correct.
Tu passes un niveau agrégation ?
En général depuis que je te corrige, je remarque:
1) ton français est bon.
2) tu as tendance a modifié ou oublié une partie du sens de la phrase. Donc, ta phrase n'a pas toujours tout a fait le même sens que l'original.
So what you do is:
first get the essense of the sentence. here : best restaurnt betwee the two overcrowded beaches.
then you look at the tense the form affirmative... and the grammatical form...
then you build your sentence in french with the same meanings and the equivalent french grammatical tense and structure.
Here as loupd'amérique says if you could have say des plages it would be french but not the translation as the comparison between the two are revelant of the sentence.
You must rewrite your sentence, not translate word by word.
You can write:"si surpeuplé" "plage" "des deux" "laquelle" "avoir" "meilleur restaurant" présent.
et maintenant tu construis ta phrase avec la tournure grammaticale française...
Surpeuplées (les plages) le particpe-passé s'accorde avec le sujet avec le verbe être.
Bon courage
December 17, 2012
"However overcrowded the beaches are, at least we know which of the two has the better restaurant.
My attempt: Si surpeuplé que les plages soient, au moins on sait laquelle de plages a le meilleur restaurant."
Your attempt is not that far from the perfect answer! The structure is good and the verbe tenses (most important aspects of french!) are right.
The perfect answer would be : Aussi surpeuplées que les plages soient, au moins nous savons laquelle des deux a le meilleur restaurant.
In your answer, you used "si" which would be "as" in english. "Aussi" is closer in its meaning to "However" because it's a little less definite than "si". Other than that, I simply chose to use "nous" rather than "on" simply because IMO it's better to do so when you write. And I changed your "de plages" (in which "de" is missing a S, to make it "des plages") to "des deux" just to replicate more exactly the english sentance (which of the two). Note that "laquelle des plages" could be okay, but it's also a little redundant because of the repetition of "plages" in the same sentance.
That's it, hope it helps ;)
December 17, 2012
Still haven’t found your answers?
Write down your questions and let the native speakers help you!
Eire_Craig
Language Skills
English, French, Gaelic (Irish), Hindi
Learning Language
French, Hindi
Articles You May Also Like

The Power of Storytelling in Business Communication
44 likes · 9 Comments

Back-to-School English: 15 Must-Know Phrases for the Classroom
32 likes · 6 Comments

Ten Tourist towns in Portugal that nobody remembers
59 likes · 23 Comments
More articles