"Il te lit le menu."
Translation:He reads you the menu.
37 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
hey, not sure if you speak or have learned Spanish, but this is the same grammar deal as in Spanish.... Te is an indirect object pronoun. Soo translated from grammar to English, te means "to you", and the verb of what they're doing to you, comes after it. So if you want to say "he reads to you", just think that in French it's backwards and you're going to say "to you he reads". te lit. The same for the Indirect Object Pronouns to me, to him, to us, etc. It's weird at first, but you get used to it :)
To be more specific, when the indirect object is sandwiched between the verb and the direct object, there is no "to" because there is no ambiguity in which is the direct and indirect object. The first object is always indirect, and the second is always direct by grammatical construction. When this is not certain, i.e. when the word order is flipped or the direct object is omitted, then "to" is necessary, such as "He reads the book to you" (where "to" is necessary to show that the indirect object is after the direct object) or, even more simply, "He reads to you" (where there is no direct object, and thus it is necessary to show that "you" is indirect.)
Hi sparkle. Alluded to in the very post just above yours. In English it is either "He reads you the menu" or "He reads the menu to you" and the twain dont meet. Also, the literal translation of the French sentence is "He you reads the menu" and the most apt translation to English uses exactly the same words in a different order.
1562
why is it that" he reads the menu to you" is acceptable but he reads the menu for you is unacceptable? in previous exercises the concept" ...to you" or '... "for you" in the translation was suggested
725
Because "tu" is only used as the subject in a sentence, the one doing whatever it is. In this case the subject of the sentence is "il" because "he" is doing the reading.
Since the reading is done "to you", you would use "te" in front of the verb, which would indicate the object/person the reading is being done to.