"Elle ressemble fortement à sa grand-mère."
Translation:She strongly resembles her grandmother.
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How are we supposed to pick up on the english context here. HIS grandmother?
"elle ressemble" logically (but not exclusively) would rather lead you to "her"
1596
I never noticed this before, but is there any logical explanation as to why it is "grand-mere" and not "grande-mere"?
Few theories floating around, posted the one that seems most plausible to me here:
I put "she bears a striking resemblance to her grandmother" and lost a heart.
This is definitely much better english, but we all know that our hearts are not necessarily linked to good english…. :) I would never say "strongly resembles" but I did type it as my answer and kept my heart - Yippee!
Ressembler is just one of those french verbs that need à after them and before the indirect object in the sentence. The english equivalents don't always have a preposition. Obeir is another one.
Les enfants n'obéissent pas à leurs parents - The children don't obey their parents The preposition à is needed before the indirect object. NB No preposition for a in the English translation.
Other french verbs needs à after the when they are follwed by an infinitiveHave you come across continuer à marcher yet? If not - you soon will : )
http://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/why-french-verbs-followed-preposition-a-infinitive (This is the easy-to-read blog of a "learn to speak french" site. There is heaps of useful and interesting info on the blog pages. Use the search box on the site and key in "blogs" Blog titles will appear with blue tabs indicating what they are about (ie whether just general interest or tips with french etc)
http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/preposition_a.htm (This one has three pages on the use of à)
"She very much resembles her grandmother" is correct? Does this English sound bad to anyone else? It seems very awkward and cumbersome. At the same time it didn't accept "she heavily resembles her grandmother"
I would say: She looks a lot like her grandmother. Or, She bears a striking resemblance to her grandmother.
it's very clumsy we know what it means but we would never say it. She looks just like her grandmother, or variants of that would be the way to do it.The construction ' pronoun very much verb' is generally clumsy.
