Adverbs with "Essayer"
I am not understanding how to use adverbs with "essayer". A number of my friends say that the adverb has to go before "de" and other friends say the adverb has to go after "de".
If I want to say: "I try a lot/I try very much to practice french every day", do I say:
"j'essaie beacoup de pratiquer le francais tous les jours"
or
"j'essaie de beacoup pratiquer le francais tous les jours"
If i replace "beaucoup" with "bien" which is right?
"j'essaie bien de pratiquer le francais tous les jours"
or
"j'essaie de bien pratiquer le francais tous les jours"
12 Comments
j'essaie bien de pratiquer le français tous les jours
j'essaie de bien pratiquer le français tous les jours
These sentences are grammatically correct but the meaning isnt the same.
The 2nd means you try to practice efficiently.
The 1st means you try efficiently to practice.
thank you i was so confused and i didn't know why. But if i can ask, the adverb NEVER comes after de when it is emphasising the verb before "de", right? Do you know what I mean?
For the other sentence :
"j'essaie beaucoup de pratiquer le français tous les jours"
"j'essaie de pratiquer beaucoup le français tous les jours"
Depends what is a lot, if its trying or practicing.
I would say "J'essaie tellement de m'exercice le français tous les jours" My tutor told me not to try to use "pratiquer" like we use "practice" as in "I have to practice the clarinet", it's more like in "I am a doctor; I practice medicine" Learn to use tel(le) and tellement, they are very useful
M'exercice
Doesnt exist
M'exercer o m'entrainer
PS : de m'exercer/entrainer en français
Have you tried wordreference? I like it because it has lots of examples. http://www.wordreference.com/fren/beaucoup
I'm not an expert in French but did take it for a couple years a long time ago. So, I'll try, but no doubt will be corrected by others if I'm wrong. I hope you won't mind my attempt. It might be possible to put the adverbs in more than one place, but it would change the meaning of the sentence.
"J'essaie de bien pratiquer le français tous les jours" seems better to me than the other version, but this is mostly intuitive. I'd interpret this to mean something like I try to do a good job practicing French every day. The bien seems to emphasize the quality of the practice rather than frequency or the amount of effort.
I did find this "Certain adverbs (such as mieux, assez, beaucoup, trop, bien) as well as indefinite pronouns (such as tout and rien) commonly occur between a preposition and the verb, but personal pronouns and other adverbs ... make for a markedly literary/poetic usage bordering on archaic."
It's possible that "J'essaie bien de pratiquer le français tous les jours" is also okay, but means something different like "I try really hard to practice every day." However, I'm not sure.
In any case, J'ai fait un effort = I tried. Hopefully, any corrections I get will be helpful for you too.
p.s. I wrote my message before seeing the others. Kangourex has much better answers.
thank you i think i understand. another guy said that "tellement" would be a better word to use. but i think my problem was i was trying to say that i try very hard to practice french with the emphasis on "try" rather than the quality of pratiquer, but the person i was talking to thought i was trying to put emphasis on pratiquer rather than essayer.
So, based on the other responses that you've gotten was "J'essaie beaucoup de pratiquer le français tous les jours" what you wanted to say then? In any case, this was a really good post. I like questions like this as I learn something too.
