"My ex never paid for Saturday night pizzas."

Translation: Mon ex ne payait jamais les pizzas du samedi soir.

[kikikogoya]

Could someone explain why this is "du samedi" and not "le samedi" ?

[angus390025]

le samedi is a subset of du samedi, since du is a contraction of de + le

my ex never paid for the pizzas of (the) Saturday evening
mon ex ne payait jamais les pizzas du samedi soir

[TahaTaha585665]

Why does "jamais' changes location? At times comes before the verb, other times after the verb. What's the rule?

[MandyB11]

You have lots of "negative words" - pas, jamais, rien etc. If you're talking about the past, which is when there's often confusion (consider me frequently confused!), there's (usually!) the ne then if necessary the auxiliary - a, est, sont, avons etc, then the negative word - pas, jamais etc. Finally there's the past participle of the verb: payé in this case if it were in the perfect past. Il n'a jamais payé.

If it's the imperfect past tense as in the exercise above, the negative word goes directly after the verb (because? There are probably other reasons) there's only the pronoun & the verb to negate.

Hopefully, somebody far better than I will explain it all.

[MandyB11]

• Howcheng just simplified my ramble before I posted! Excellent timing!

[howcheng]

"Jamais" and the other negative words (pas, rien, plus) come after the primary verb. When you combine verbs, it's after the first one. Examples:

• Je n'ai jamais mangé les pommes
• Je ne veux pas manger des pommes
• Je ne mange plus les pommes

[Jos225063]

It's a funky English sentence. Saturday night seems an adjective (as in Saturday night fever).