"Peut-être que je travaillerais comme homme de ménage."
Translation:Maybe I would work as a cleaning man.
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1383
but I've never heard "cleaning man" in English. A faithful translation is not necessary word for word!
- 282
Me neither. But I've never seen one either. That's because people hire "cleaning ladies" (for houses) and "janitors" (or "cleaning service") for other buildings.
Good question, and no answer yet. What is the que doing here anyway?
Peut-être is a strange thing.
At the beginning of a sentence, it must be followed by "que" or by a verb-subject inversion:
- Peut-être que je travaillerais...
- Peut-être travaillerais-je...
If you place it after the verb, it does not need any adjustment in the syntax:
- Je travaillerais peut-être...
OK, thanks! Just realized that both Dutch and Swedish use the same 'construction' with the word 'maybe': so it's easy to remember. For me, at least :)
- 1054
As a janitor? Is there any difference between cleaning man and janitor? (Non english native)
- 730
yes, big difference. an institution (eg normally a school) has a janitor which is a full time position and seems to revolve around fixing things eg broken desks, doors which creak, plumbing. A janitor is more like a handy-man. Cleaners come in after work and clean workspaces for a couple hours.
- 883
I agree with how you've described this difference, the only thing I would add as a UK resident is that the word "janitor" is very rare (apart from in Hong Kong Phooey cartoons) and the common word for this person is "caretaker".
- 700
A janitor is a cleaning man in Canada and is a very common word. Janitors can be female also. Maintenance workers do the repairs, although, In certain job descriptions janitors can do maintenance too. Where I worked( in a skating rink) I did all the maintenance and the janitors did all the cleaning.
- 1223
So weird because the voice is a woman. Maybe Duo is trying to force my "wokeness" to not assume gender.
- 638
Maybe...
Is it just me, or is this ubiquitous "wokeness" (woketion, wokity? getting increasingly in the way of communication. It is quite distracting.
