29 Comments
Yes—the sentence is talking about the girl being believed by someone else, not the girl herself doing the believing.
When using inversion, but wanting to name the subject using a noun (la fille), you usually place the subject noun in front of the inversion, from what I understand.
"Does the girl believe?" = <<La fille croit-elle ?>> ((I think!! I'm no native speaker)) ((Also, I think this has implications of religion - does the girl have religious faith?))
I think you can place the subject noun behind the verb-pronoun if there's a comma.
"Does the girl believe?" = <<Croit-elle, la fille ?>> ((Again, no native speaker))
But from what I researched, this structure looks awkward, though grammatically correct.
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1363358
http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa110601.htm
http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais-anglais/croire/20494
Yep, I just made the same mistake so I'm not sure I qualified to explain why, I only kind of get it now.
the default translation is "doesh she believe the girl?". can this be translated as "does she trust the girl?" or "does she believe in the girl?"
"Does she trust the girl?" is correct, but "Does she believe in the girl" = "Croit-elle en la fille ?"
"elle" comes after "croit" and in this configuration it means "does she believe...?" and "la fille" means the girl. So putting it together: Does she believe the girl? If the "la fille" was the only person they were talking about, they wouldn't need to put "elle"
I think they would though. How would you way "Does the girl believe?" Would it be "La fille, croit-elle?"
La fille, croit-elle? = The girl, she believes?
Est-ce que la fille croit? = Does the girl believe?
So, how would I translate Does the girl believe her? Est-ce que la fille croit-elle ?
Right. In my experience, if you use a pronoun and switch the subject and the verb, you do not need to move the subject to the end as well. It's redundant because you've already changed it to "croit-elle" instead of "elle croit". Therefore the only interpretation of this sentence that makes sense is "Does SHE believe the girl?" Does that make sense?
Thanks for your explanation. That makes sense. My answer was Does the girl believe her. I'm still not sure why that is incorrect. Study, study, study, right ?
How would you translate: "does the girl believe HIM?" into french? Wouldn´t that mean "Croit-lui la fille?" or something like that?
So what does this sentence mean? Why is 'does the girl believe' wrong? If the meaning were 'does the girl believe in the girl' (one girl believing in another girl) then would it not be 'croit-elle à la fille' instead?
The French sentence could also be phrased as "Est-ce qu'elle croit la fille," right?
I'm having so much trouble pronouncing this verb in all its forms. How on earth is it pronounced??
how do you believe somebody? i thought you would believe in somebody, not believe them.
You believe someone (their words or testimony). You believe IN someone means means you trust the persons character or their ability to cope with a situation.
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To be honest, the difference is subtle and might actually be non-existent in casual speech. But in this particular audio, I clearly hear the “r”.
