- Forum >
- Topic: French >
- "Lisez-ça."
"Lisez-ça."
Translation:Read this.
18 Comments
416
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?
678
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.
416
After a lot of (virtual) footwork, I have determined that the "direct object" rule does not apply to demonstrative pronouns (ça, cela, ceci...).
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.
416
Hello, that was me over on HiNative, thanks for the help. And now we know - no hyphen with demonstrative pronouns!