106 Comments
Could the l' also be 'it' here instead of 'her'? e.g. my wife has just given me a gift and I tell her "My wife, I love it!" ?
It will depend upon who or what you mean by "it":
"je l'adore" for a masculine or feminine thing mentioned before
"j'adore ça" if "it" means this/that
In reply to Sitesurf:
From what I have learned, using aimer with things means to like, but using adorer with things means to love.
Following this logic, it would seem correct to say "I love it"="Je l'adore" (as "Je l'aime" would mean "I like it").
Could you please elaborate? :)
Apparently, either I misread the previous question or it was changed afterwards, but my answer does not match the question as I see it now. Sorry for that. I therefore edited my previous post.
If you call your wife from downstairs when she is upstairs, you have a variety of possibilities: her first name, her nickname (chérie, trésor, poussin...).
You will just never cry out "ma femme ! tu es là ?"
IDK, I often call my husband "husband". Me on the couch "Huussbaand" him in the kitchen "what wife" me "get me a drink"
Although you are correct I never call him "my husband" when talking to him.
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I dont think he is talking to her in this case, just about her. He follows with "I love her". Not you.
Talking about you wife to a third party as "ma femme" is fine.
But when you come back home and call for your wife while opening the door, you will not say "ma femme !". That's what I meant.
I know many French Acadians who do it. I presume it started as a joke but it's part of their vernacular now.
So "ma femme" means "my wife" but does not mean "my woman"? It seems to me "My woman, I adore her." should be acceptable.
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The takeaway is that whenever you hear ma femme you should understand it to mean my wife. It's true that if you hear my woman in English you should not assume it means my wife.
Well "my woman" in English can mean either "my wife/ girlfriend/ friend/ woman" (the third one in the same context as "my man/ guy/ boy/ lad" etc. meaning "my friend").
I put somewhere before: mon mari (not mon homme) as translation to "my man" which was considered wrong, so now, to be sure, I put My woman as a translation to ma femme, wrong again.. grrrrr
Why wouldn't you call your wife 'Ma femme' in French? I have heard people use 'ma femme' to refer to their wives.
if you are talking about your wife to someone else, you will indeed say "ma femme..." but if you call her, you will not say "ma femme" as a direct address
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In English you could say to your wife, my wife, come here. You just wouldn't like the reaction you get when you do.
Why on earth not? My wife, come here, is quite endearing. Certainly not unpleasant especially if said with a nice tone of voice.
I would definitely get hit if I said that to my wife, regardless of the tone. It sounds too possessive. Like you're calling to your dog.
I was not able to comment or reply to dimensional_dan but I agree with Hohenems. You could say "my wife" directly to her in a kind, endearing way perhaps, but it still comes off as possessive. "My love" or "my dear" are sweet, but "my wife" just does not sound sweet or loving in English.
Interesting... I hear people use expressions like this, and it is used as a term of endearment, much the same way as you might say "My love, come here", or more common these days, "come here, my love".
Interestingly this would probably change somewhat with a qualifying adjective... "My darling wife..." and with the latter half being a subjunctive request... "could you come here." One might even change it to "come to me".
It's not possessive at all. This is a very common (and fustrating!!!) mistake, and a sign of the bias in people who wish to find offence where they is none.
Take for example the sentence, speaking to a female
"My hero, come here"
surely you won't argue that sounds possessive/ insulting etc.
"My brother" does not belong to me, but the relationship, in the intengible sense, does, or rather, it belongs to both of us, since we are each others brothers.
There is nothing at all possessive/ insulting about the phrase "my wife", rather, we have all simply been told that there is and never truly thought about it.
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I adore her = subject I, verb adore, direct object pronoun her.
La is the direct object form of the pronoun her. Direct object pronouns are placed in front of verb.
Je la adore = subject Je, direct object pronoun la, verb adore.
Se is the reflexive form which is not appropriate in this example.
"se" is used in pronominal/reflexive constructions.
il s'adore = he adores himself
When I took french classes, they told me that "aimer" doesn't have the same meaning as "love", being more accurately translated to just "like", while adore has a stronger meaning. Is that correct?
There is a relatively clear line between inanimate objects and people, when it comes to use verb "aimer":
- I like your house = j'aime (bien) ta maison (mild)
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I love your house = j'aime beaucoup ta maison (warmer) - j'adore ta maison (enthusiastic)
-
I like the guy = j'aime bien ce type (sympathy)
- I like him a lot = je l'aime beaucoup (friendship / no sex involved)
- I love brunettes = j'aime les brunes (aesthetical or sexual attraction)
- I love my children = j'adore mes enfants, ma famille, mon frère, mes amis... (family love + friendship)
- I love him/her = je l'aime (sexual love)
When you pluck petals from a daisy (to know whether he/she loves you), you say: "il/elle m'aime un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, à la folie, pas du tout !"
"My wife, I love her" sounds like a frenchman speaking english. An englishman would simply say "I love my wife", if he could be induced to speak of such intimate matters.
An English person would only say it like that if they were asked directly if they loved their wife and were caught off guard or surprised by the question. I think that is why the translation is My wife? I love her.
Just translate it the way I did: "I adore my wife", and then you don't need to worry whether or not "My wife, I love her" makes sense or not!
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JayChew1
l'adore = la adore = verb + direct object form (which is placed in front of the verb)
third person singular direct object form = la = her (in this example)
je l'adore = I love her = correct
s'adore = se adore = verb + reflexive form (which is placed in front of the verb)
third person singular reflexive form = se = herself. (in this example)
je s'adore = I love herself = incorrect
Elle s'adore = she loves herself = correct (if that is what you want to say)
Why do you use "l'aime" and not something like "s'aime". To me, that reads, "I love it" and while I know you would not call her "it", the example uses "le". If the question was "Je l'adore" on its own, the answer should be "I love it", right?
That would be the equivalent of 'I adore/love herself'. La is the pronoun being used in this case, and can mean more than than just 'the'. Think of it like 'il' and 'elle' meaning both he and she, whilst also acting as gendered 'it' for a noun (object) within certain contexts. E.g. 'Il est gros.' Could mean 'He is big.'... or it could mean that the masculine noun object is big - 'it is big'. Il could be referring to a hat for example - chapeau being a masculine noun.
(To explain pronouns further, look at the tables here. Hope this helped!)
Grammatically it is correct, but you have not respected the emphatic tone of the original sentence.
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Where does it say that you must adhere to the word order of the original sentence. There are no guidelines on Duolingo stating that a translation must respect the sentences construction. Many times it is not even possible to respect the sentences construction due to grammar differences between the original and the target languages.
It is not only a matter of word order, it is a matter of meaning.
If Duo expected you to write "I love my wife", the French sentence would have been "j'aime ma femme".
'i love my wife' is how it would be expressed in english. 'my wife, i love her' might occur in a murder mystery story where the wife in question has mysteriously disappeared.....
To say, "my wife, come here" in English is just awkward, possessive or boastful, especially if you have audience. If there is no audience, then it's just plain possessive and anticipates subservience. Perhaps, you may successfully use it this way, "my wife, here I am." or "Here it is, my wife" this example calls for exaggerated manners and finesse.
Maybe he's confessing his love for another person while talking to his wife, like: hey wife, I love another woman/man :/
No, this would not work for you don't call your wife "hé, ma femme !".
Either you use her name or one of the many nicknames she most certainly has (chérie, trésor...).
Hmm, I think I know why English speakers would assume this is "My wife, I love it!" We'd never say "My wife, I love her" unless it's a badly written over-the-top novel, play, or movie. We'd say "My wife? I love her!"
It's just a pity that Duolingo does not pay attention to punctuation because the French sentence is best translated to "my wife? I love her".
Can it be ' my wife, i adore her.' Along with i love her...can't both be correct?
my wife, whom I love = ma femme, que j'aime
"whom I love" and "que j'aime" are relative clauses and your sentence is incomplete since it misses a verb in the main clause, like: "my wife, whom I love, is British".
Since my answer of "my wife? I adore her" is apparently wrong, how would one say "my wife? I adore her" in French? Notwithstanding the fact that translating this sentence structure in this clunky way into English makes it sound as if it's a line Yoda might deliver...
No, because the meaning is different. Of course you can respect someone you adore and vice versa, but they are not synonyms.
Because the verb "adorer" doesn't require "à"/indirect objects to fulfill its meaning. "Adorer" always takes the direct object pronouns. If you ever doubt if there should be a direct or indirect object, simply extend the the indirect object pronoun into "à + <disjunctive pronoun>" and see if it makes sense. For example: Je lui adore = J'adore à elle (adorer à doesn't make sense so it's wrong).
There is no question mark. How do i know that "my wife?" is a question?
In proper English, you don't construct this sentence with a comma. You can with a question mark, as if you repeated part of a question previously asked.
In French, this construction, with a comma, is very common and emphatic, especially in speech.
It's still possible in English to use a comma, to give it a rather more literary feel. When used with a question mark though, it rather feels like someone asked the speaker something like "do you like your wife?", to which the speaker replied with the sentence with the question mark.
why wouldn"t you use s'adore as I'd think s' would represent her or him not l'?
"s'" in "s'adore" is a reflexive pronoun. Reflexive pronouns denote what's happening to the subject of the sentence. They go like this:
- Je - me (elides into m'). Example: Je m'adore (I love myself)
- Tu - te (elides into t'). Example: Tu t'adores (You love yourself)
- Il/Elle/On - se (elides into s'). Example: Elle s'adore (She loves herself)
- Vous - vous. Example: Vous vous adorez (You love yourself/yourselves)
- Nous - nous. Example: Nous nous adorons (We love ourselves)
- Ils/Elles - se (elides into s'). Example: Ils s'adorent (They love themselves)
So, "je s'adore" does NOT translate to "I love her"! It doesn't make any grammatical sense either! "Je m'adore" = "I love myself", "Je l'adore" = "I love him/her/it". The "l'" in "l'adore" is a direct object pronoun. Which is different from reflexive pronouns. Direct object pronouns are pronouns to which the action happens, i.e. the object. They go like this:
- Je - me (elides into m'). Example: Tu m'adores (You love me)
- Tu - te (elides into t'). Example Je t'adore (I love you)
- Il - le (elides into l'). Example: Je l'adore (I love him/it)
- Elle - la (elides into l'). Example: Tu l'adores (I love her/it)
- Vous - vous. Example: Je vous adore (I love you)
- Nous - nous. Example: Ils nous adorent (They love us)
- Ils/Elles - les. Example: Je les adore (I love them)
As you can see, "l'" is the pronoun for both "Il" and "Elle", so it's gender invariable and mostly depends on context. So, "Je l'adore"="I love her" (In the sentence "Ma femme, je l'adore").
The sentence's essential meaning is just that, but writing that will not be accepted because it changes the sentence's construction.
Because the grammatical and contextual structure of both the languages are different. Duolingo doesn't actually look for punctuation, so you can write the sentence without using any and still get accepted.
No, it says "My wife, I love her". Notice the "l'", it's the elided form of "la", which is the feminine direct object when placed before the verb.
Ma femme, je l'adore = My wife, I love her
Because the grammatical and contextual structure of both the languages are different. Duolingo doesn't actually look for punctuation, so you can write the sentence without using any and still get accepted.
