"C'est vous que j'ai aperçus par la fenêtre !"
Translation:It's you that I saw out the window!
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518
I think it may be better English to say 'through the window' ? (Or at least to say 'out of the window')
Yep! I was about to make the same point. ("through the window" not " out the window")
"It's you" is more commonly phrased as "You're the one". You look out the window, you see something through the window.
- 1326
Yeah, but if you're working on French translation for a lesson, c'est vous = it's you.
And "through the window" has been accepted.
I'm with MARTILANNE on this. Who refers back to the subjects "It" and "you" who are the same person.
- 835
The who, whom or that (whichever you might choose) is not correferential with the expletive subject it (which, being an expletive, by definition has no reference), but rather it's correferential with vous/you, which clearly is not the subject of either the main clause or the subordinate, cleft clause but the focused predicate of the main clause.
The who(m)/that is the object of saw in the "cleft" clause. In the cleft construction, that always works, whether it's the subject, object or neither of those; you might prefer whom (formal) or who (informal) when the focussed constituent (you, here) refers to a person or persons.
Even with the word "saw" as part of the sentence? Is it like saying, "I saw her home," meaning I walked/drove her home to make sure she got there? Or I'll see you out, meaning I'll escort you to the door? I love learning how languages differ, especially when it's the same base language!
vous can be a formal singular. But I wonder, doesn't that imply that "C'est vous que j'ai aperçus par la fenêtre " can also be C'est vous que j'ai aperçu par la fenêtre (without the S after aperçu)
- 1071
in passe compose the conjugated verb agrees with the object. Here the object is "vous", a plural word so an "s" is added. Similar to the conjugated verb agreeing with the subject in passe compose conjugated with "etre", "vous etes alles".
- 484
Well I differ from everyone in preferring 'from' the window, but it wasn't accepted. The 'out the window' even if you anglicise it to 'out of the window' doesn't convey what I take to be the meaning.
- 766
In English "It's" (contraction of It is) is wrong here. It should be "It was..." The French tenses don't always translate equally into English. However this doesn't deal very well in the case of it being more than one person. In that case we'd probably just say "I saw you all through the window".
- 1326
Present tense works. You're talking to someone in the present time about something that happened in the past. It's the same in English and French, of course.
- 766
Well in the UK if we were talking to someone about something that happened in the past we would say "I saw you ...", or "It was you that I saw...."
- 2786
I agree with most here it should be 'through the window' or at least 'out OF the window', but then again I don't chew bubblegum or wear a baseball cap the wrong way, so what do I know.