"Lisez-ça."

Translation: Read this.

[DianaM]

I am puzzled by the hyphen. I got this as a translation French-to-English. Had it been the other way around, or the audio, I would certainly have written "Lisez ça." Is that wrong?

[BenYoung84]

My understanding is that everytime there is a direct object pronoun in the imperative that it will be hyphenated. E.g. Appelle-moi would be Call me. The hyphen serves a useful purpose because only in the non-negated imperative mood is a direct object pronoun placed after the verb instead of before. Hence the similarity to the hyphen in the subject-verb inversion which is the other main case where word ordering is changed.

[DianaM]

After a lot of (virtual) footwork, I have determined that the "direct object" rule does not apply to demonstrative pronouns (ça, cela, ceci...).

[Xtian1992]

I don't get the hyphen either. Hopefully it's a mistake.

[chinmayhej]

I think it's a mistake too.

[AaronEngst]

I hope irl french people arent as incomprehensible as these computer voice translations.

[lyonkurala]

I tried listening to radio and television in French, just to train my listening comprehension, but it is so difficult... I just feel like my reading comprehension is at a much higher level and it's a bit weird.

[ag3n7_z3r0]

That will definitely be the case because of the way we are learning. I finished this tree in August, and I am just now finding the confidence to have conversations with native speakers. I find that I have to write a sentence down before I can recite it, especially if it's rather complex. N'abandonne pas ! Tu peux y arriver.

[studyy]

I too have the same problem .

[lucy163354]

This is the first time I've seen ça connected to the verb with a hyphen.

[DianaM]

Yeah, it's wrong.

[JKPrice]

I wish that the spoken questions posted translations after completion. Or before.

[KristianEd407709]

I wrote disez ca and it was given as correct!

[JenCraven]

I was given almost correct. Even knowing what it's supposed to be, it still sounds like "Disez-ça" to me.

[_Ado_]

It's written "Lisez ça" and not "Lisez-ça". ;)

[DianaM]

Hello, that was me over on HiNative, thanks for the help. And now we know - no hyphen with demonstrative pronouns!

[apGeraint]

Ça means "that" not "this", also there should be no hyphen.

[_Ado_]

"ça" means either "that" and "this".