103 Comments
When you see il and faut together, it means "it is necessary"
Just something that needs to be remembered.
• What does one have to do later? • What is necessary to do then?
So where is the it used in this sentence then?
Il faut does not mean "it is necessary" in the way that il/elle doit means "he/she must". Someone does not need to do something, but rather, something needs to be done.
I answered "What must be done then?" which was considered wrong. Shouldn't that be accepted?
You're ignoring the "faut-il" (inversion of "il faut"), which means roughly "it is necessary," or in this inverted form, "is it necessary."
I understand "What to do next?" as a less formal equivalent of "What must be done next?" or "What is necessary to do next?" "it is necessary" is implied there, at least in some contexts.
I guess you imagined something like a group of friends who just finished some activity and ask for suggestions for other program - off course, in this context "What to do next? don't imply necessity at all. But imagine two people, one installing some gadget and the other reading manual. If the one without the manual asks "What to do next?", he means "What is necessary to do next?" (let's suppose he considers following the manual as a necessary condition for making the machine work).
Anyway, I report that "What to do next" should be accepted.
I agree with you and the other poster. It's a perfectly normal thing to do, look about after say, one task, rub your hands together and say, "[Right,] what to do next...?"
"It's necessary, or we must", if we need to give a translation. However, the English idiom is, "What do we do next?" not, "What MUST we do next?" So, again, are we giving translations or equivalent idioms is the question I'm struggling with.
The idiom? English speakers might ask this question all kinds of ways. I don't really think there is a major idiom here. In any case, O don't think this isn't the French for "What do we do next?" This is the French for the English case when someone does happen to go ahead and say "What must we do next?"
The real problem here is that the offered answer just isn't necessary. To make it English, you need to interpose "it" between "is" and "necessary".
This really depends where you were brought up. Where I live, it's perfectly correct to say "What is necessary to do next?". No "it" is necessary! However, it appears this correct answer has been removed, so Duolingo marks me wrong every time.
Yeah, I don't like the given answer either, and I agree that an "it" would make it better. I still prefer "what must be done then?" which, if I remember correctly, did get added as a correct answer eventually.
EDITED to delete the previous entry because it was no longer accurate, since my thinking is different now. Leaving it up would only lead to redundant responses.
Why is, Que faut-it faire ensuite, What do WE have to do then, instead of, What does HE have to do then, or, What does IT have to do then?
"Il faut" is an expression that means "one most", or "it is necessary". When using "one must" I suppose it would be found in a sentence that was in the context of something involving pronouns such as "I", "we", "he", "she", etc.?
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"What is necessary to do next?" ... The current English translation is awkward and not how people speak
So, if a person wanted to say 'what does HE have to do then?', would you say, 'que doit-il faire ensuite?' Another question: to maintain the use of 'il faut' (e.g.. il faut qu'il faire encore)....how do you express this as an interrogative?
I think your second sentence should not use the infinitive "faire" but should be "il faut qu'il FAIT (quelque chose)" eg "il faut qu'il fait ses études" = "it is necessary that he does his studies".
My guess is the question might be "qu'est-ce qu'il faut qu'il fait?" "What is (it that is) necessary for him to do?"
Hopefully someone will correct me if I am wrong.
The "we" is implied in the phrase "il faut", (or in this instance, "faut il"). It's a phrase that simply means "one must" or "we must". It is something that needs to be done. One must wash one's clothes,one must change the oil in one's car. One in this case is a generisation. One= We. Its origin is in "devoir"
Okay, on one question where faut-il was used and I didn't mark down " is IT necessary" I get dinged, not I do put the "IT" and I get dinged. I am so confused why the IT was used in the other one and not here!
Correct solutions: • What's to I do next? That solution doesn't make any grammatical sense.
I answered "What do we do then?" and it marked it as incorrect but said that the right answer is "What's to we do then?" Not even grammatically correct in English. :/
I put "what is it necessary to do next?" but was told this was wrong and it should be "what is necessary to do next?". I would never use the latter in English and would always include "it". I don't understand why my answer was marked as wrong.
I am not a native speaker, but I have never heard or read that construction - it sounds grammatically incorrect to me. I guess the correct construction would be "what is it that is necessary to do next?" for your answer.
Hi Dhritisundar:
Looks like you and I went to the same school. :c)))
Trust me, there are very few of us who think like you do. So far I have counted 3 in Duolingo. We are outnumbered in our thinking as you will find if you read a discussion in which I tried to put forth our suggestion and even consulted a few authorities in English. It seems, at least in the US, "What is it necessary [to do] next?" is considered more grammatically correct than our preferred "What is necessary [to do] next?" Or rather, without "it" I was told the sentence had a different meaning, in the sense of it is asking about the "tools" needed [to do the job], not about [the job to be done] itself. (I used the square brackets around "to do" because the verb in the sentence I was discussing was "manger" not "faire" but same basic thought.)
When I suggested the sentence you suggested, it was deemed unnecessarily wordy. So I have decided to settle on "What do we have to do next?" as my translation of Que faut-il faire ensuite ?
Here's the discussion in which I learned that not many agree with our thinking: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/210746
Hi Meres_des_chats,
Ha ha ha, I am sure we went to the same school. :) :)
I am impressed by the amount of serious thought that you and others like you put in in here and also a bit ashamed of myself for being rather careless.
The first time I read srclarke's answer, it sounded wrong to me. After reading your comments and also Sitesurf's examples, I gave it some more thought. Yes, the answer that we suggested is wordy, but I believe it is correct in grammar and it can also be used when someone ones to sound more pressing. At the same time, I feel, 'what is it necessary to do next?' is also correct but colloquially. They are in fact the same sentences, only the latter has the part 'that is' removed for ease of conversation. I am starting to realize that there are many examples where 'that is' and 'that' are omitted in conversational English.
'What is it (that) you are eating?' 'what is it (that is) shining in the distance?' 'I feel (that) you should stay'.
I feel all the three answers(one without 'it', one with 'it', and the one with 'that is') can be more or less used for different connotations. However, I do not know which connotation is being suggested by the French sentence. Translation is really tricky business :( .
@srclarke, my apologies. Please ignore my previous comment.
I was marked wrong, and the suggested translation was "What's to I do next" :/
I like the English translation here, but the only option with the words provided was very clumsy English construction.
Reading through the comments from 4 years ago, it's good to see that we have moved on from slavishly following "It is necessary" for "il faut", because it's far too stilted in English. It might be appropriate in a research lab report perhaps.
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Yes, well different languages have different ways of expressing thoughts. Duo is usually quite good at providing natural sounding translations. Also, we can always suggest a better translation. Quite a number of my suggestions have been adopted in the courses I'm doing.
No because, "il faut" means "it is necessary"; the "il" refers to "it," not "he." In this case, "il faut" is inverted to "faut-il" to make it a question.
If I wanted to say "what must HE do", would I be forced to use doir(e?) instead of falloir?
why is the accepted answer some complete garbage and why has nobody questioned it? "What's to I do then?" eh, what?
What is wrong with "what is it necessary to do next"? DL said that the "it" should not be there, but is not such good English.
Why duo advises to use: "what is it necessay to do after" and not accepting : " what is necessary to do after it"?
Because your sentence is adding more than was in the original sentence.
The sentence in this exercise is equivalent to "what must be done after/next?" while your proposed sentence is equivalent to "what must be done after it?" You are adding an object not mentioned in the given sentence.
The answer to the question in this exercise could be: "Next, it is necessary to [do XYZ]". The "it" here (and in the question) does not refer to anything in particular. However, the answer to your question would be "After that, it is necessary to [do XYZ]" where "that" replaces the "it" in your question which was actually referring. to something that came first and after which you are asking what needed to be done.
ok, but then I prefer to use "what is it necessary to do next" in stead of "what is it necessary to do after". But is the meaning still the same?
To me, the meaning is still the same, and it would be accurately conveyed by que faut-il faire ensuite ?
Oh, trust me, I tried that argument and even consulted with language experts and was told "it" is needed. I chalked it up to one of those things I somehow missed in my upbringing. Perhaps it is one of those mistakes made so often that we start to find them normal. Like when people say they are going to lay down instead of lie down.
"What is it necessary to do next" is the right answer provided by Duo, and "What is necessary to do next?" marked wrong. Duo keeps marking people's English wrong, as though it is an English (not French) course. You'd think that they'd correct their own English, no?
Hi Vivian:
You might consider reading the discussion so you can see that those of us who think like you do were outnumbered and had to give in. I even contacted English professors and was told Duo's proposal is correct. Turns out that there is a large number of English speakers who agree with Duolingo. You will see what conclusion I came to that made this easier to swallow. Maybe it'll work for you too.
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I used the cut and paste for this exercise and gave 'What is necessary to do then'. I didn't like it much, but it was all I could do with the options given in this new 'cut and paste' method. I entered it and got it wrong. The 'correct' answer given is 'What do we have to do next?'. This is fine, except that I wasn't given either 'we', 'have', or next in the options I had to paste.
That is asking a totally different question. Your question could be interepreted as asking what item(s) is/are required. The given question makes it clear that the question is about an action and nothing else.
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Still don't understand why "what is necessary got wrong while what is it necessary* is correct.
Is this after reading the whole discussion on this topic? I already addressed this ad nauseum and even consulted English professors on this and I shared all my findings.
No, "il faut" means "it is necessary"; the "il" refers to "it," not "he." In this case, "il faut" is inverted to "faut-il" to make it a question. (Also, probably just a typo, but in your suggested English sentence, it would be "have to do then", not "has to do then".)
Unless I replay it slowly, the first word sounds more like "te" than "que". I got it right from context, but it wasn't easy.
Is this ("qu" pronounced almost as "t") common in French, or is it badly recorded here?
I assume this can translate as.... what do we have to do 'next' .... as well as 'then'
The ensuite part confuses me. Why not say: Que faut-il faire, alors? or is ensuite referring to time and not 'therefore' ? SiteSurf where you at?
From what I can remember, ensuite in this case is like saying 'in the following'/'for the following'/'then.' It implies what follows next similar to alors or puis. But you ask a very good question that I am also unsure of and would like to be certain of. c:
I also don't understand how "we" shows up in the translation when there is no context for it! :-(
"Il faut" is an impersonal construction, and in English, you can use the impersonal "we" or the impersonal "you" (along with other options). It doesn't need context.
would it be acceptable to say "What will we do then?" instead of "What shall we do then?"
I do not think those answers will work as there is no sense of urgency. I believe you need words like "have to", "must", "necessary"...to convey the stress that "il faut" adds to the phrase.
That is because you missed the sense of urgency that "il faut" brings to the sentence, namely "it is necessary". The sentence you suggest would be simply "que faisons-nous alors ?"
That would be "comment procéder ?" and IMO it does not have the necessity that il faut implies.
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I put "what will he do next" and its wrong also. Where is the nous part in the sentence?
« Il faut » is never translated "he...". It's an impersonal expression only (so there's no need for « nous » to get a possible "we" out of it). http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/falloir.htm
The sentence "What is it necessary to do after" is very clumsy and would sound much better as "What is necessary to do after that" or "What is it necessary to do afterwards".
My exercise consisted of words to choose. And the right words ("do, we") were NOT available. On the contrary, "necessary" was. The line kept showing up until I found out to use the keyboard. Imho this exercise needs a serious update.
The thing is there are more ways to convey the meaning of this sentence without using "do we".
"Is it necessary..." is how I would have translated it. Duo is testing your understanding. If you memorize phrases without understanding them well enough to be able to express them differently when you need to, then you are missing out.
“What's to be done afterwards?” is given as one of the right answers, but not "What is to be done afterwards?", Je me demande bourquoi? Sitesurf, s'il vous plaît?
Sounds like an error on Duo's part. Hope you reported it because that is the way to give input so improvements are made.
This is constantly coming up as wrong, but the word choices for this sentence are not provided. It gives the options of "What, Is, Necessary, to, do, then, grandfather, home, wild, as, it"...so I will never get it right if the words; next, have, are not a choice. This is an error and should be fixed.
Welcome to the confusion many of us had. Apparently the words to choose are "what is it necessary to do?"
I too argued against the use of "it" but as you will see from the discussion, we were fighting a losing battle. There is apparently some logic to using it.
We, have, and next are not word choices from the choices provided. It keeps looping me back, but I can't get past this because the choices are not available and I can't type the correct answer.
Do you read the discussion before posting? The answer is in the words you listed. An answer that even I initially argued against but found that there may be some logic to it so gave in.
You probably need to read the discussion. I had your exact sentiments when I first did this exercise and even contacted English professors to ask about that construction. Turns out that those of are of us who see something wrong with this are in the minority. Experts told me that Duo was right. Check out the discussion.
That is a totally different sentence: Que doit-il faire ensuite ?
Please get in the habit of reading before posting. It has been explained ad nauseum that il in this construction does not translate to "he".
Instead of rushing to post a question, remember there are many students who were at your level at one time and who passed through here. So always assume your questions are not new and read the discussion first. That way you won't ask redundant questions that get ignored because the answers are already posted.
i put - What must be done now? It is marked wrong. I accept that. But since reading the comments here i am even more confused.
I think you were marked wrong because your sentence does not have the nuance of the question being about what must be done AFTER something else has been done. In other words, your sentence might be what one can ask when a solution is needed: so what needs to happen now since X has taken place. While the sentence in this exercise is about what needs to happen NEXT, implying very clearly, there is already one thing that has already been done and now we need the sequel.
