I’m doing some French translation exercises at the moment (not homework - classes are over for the summer) and I’ve come across a passage that appears to require the use of the words à le, in that order.
I’ve been taught that such a construction is not permitted in French, with the two words *à le * being replaced by the single word au. Is this always the case? Or is there a distinction made between *à le * (the definite article) and *à le * (the masculine pronoun accusative form preceding the verb i.e. the complément d’objet direct)? My French grammar doesn’t go into enough detail to give me an answer.
The passage is:
Has she made a cake?
Yes, and she has already begun to eat it.
Which I want to translate as:
A-t-elle fait un gâteau?
Oui, et elle a déjà commencé à le manger.
Can any French speaker clarify this somewhat obscure grammatical point for me?
There, you’re using “le” as a… god, there’s a word for it. It’s basically a pronoun replacing “the cake”. This is different from using it as an article (le gateau).
Here you’re talking about a place. You’re going to the(gender) place. If it’s a manly place, “à le” is replaced by “au”.
Similarly, “from the” or “of the” (de la for the feminine, but not de le for the masculine. Instead, du).
But to say “She has begun to eat it” is not the same sort of “to”. Here the “to” (or à) is not an indicator of where you’re going, it’s just a part of the verb construction. You’re really saying “Oui, et elle a déjà commencé à manger le gâteau”, and just contracting it.
Thanks **chaoticdonkey ** and **wolfstu ** (a veritable menagerie there). You’ve confirmed what I suspected, namely that the *à le * contraction to *au * applies only when the definite article is involved.
And I just wanted to congratulate myself on the fact that I was able to get in here and answer a language question without having 9 replies before mine. Even if it was in crappy French instead of German.
Well, there you go. Honest mistake; I think I’ve been using it as feminine all this time. I’m sure I have some other misfiles in my vocabulary. In daily use, nobody seems to care much, so they rarely get opposed and corrected.
The *à + le * rule only applies when *le * is an article (“the”). In the sentence you are referring to “Oui, et elle a déjà commencé à le manger,” the word le is a pronoun.
I think you may be asking the wrong question here. Before asking if “à le” is acceptable, I would query whether your translation is correct, specifically, if the verb construction “à manger” is right.
In English, we use the preposition “to” to show the infinitive of the verb. That’s not the case in French, because “to” is built into the infinitive form. “Aller” means “to go”, “faire” means “to make”, and so on. Specifically, “manger” means “to eat”.
So, is there any need for the “à” in front of “manger”? We need it in English to show that we’re using the infinitive form of the verb “eat”, but that is done in French by the word “manger” itself.
For example, when using “aller” to construct the future tense, we use the present indicatif of “aller”, followed by the infinitive, without any preposition in between. So to translate the English phrase “He is going to eat the cake”, in French we would say “Il va manger le gâteau.”
I would suggest that the correct translation of your phrase is as follows:
I think that the “à” is necessary as a part of the verb “commencer” here. Potential cite, but I don’t care much for online dictionaries, and my only french dictionary is a french-German one.
**Northern Piper ** - perhaps there are regional differences in the construction, but here in Sydney the *Alliance Française * people are teaching me that the verb *commencer * in French **always ** takes the preposition *à * after it, unlike the English construction where the infinitive can follow straight after e.g.
English: The choir will begin to sing at midnight.
French: La chorale commencera à chanter à minuit.
In this case the “à” goes with “commencer,” not with “manger.” Your general point is correct–in French the “to” is built in with the infinitive (“to eat”=“manger”). And in general, a verb with a helping verb doesn’t need any preposition (“I like to eat”= “J’aime manger.”) But there are a bunch of dirty rotten scoundrel verbs that, when acting as auxiliaries, require a certain preposition behind them.
commencer à – Elle commence à manger.
arrêter de – Elle arrête de manger.
essayer de --Elle essaie de manger.
There are plenty more but that’s all I can yank off the top off my head. Why these verbs demand that their little preposition friends travel with them, I don’t know. But the translation “Elle a déjà commencé à le manger” is indeed correct.
Not to mention the subtleties of things like “continuer à faire quelque chose” vs. “continuer de faire quelque chose” - where one expresses continuity as we understand it in English, and the other expresses restarting an activity after ceasing. I can never remember which is which.
Regarding à + le = au (but not if ‘le’ is a pronoun), the same is true of “de”:
Je veux du pain -but-
J’ai decide de le [not “du”] faire. (excuse lack of accents aigus)
[Aside: I could never get a definitive answer to the following question: does the verb take an agreement in the following sentence? “Quelque chose que j’ai fait(e).” Logically, yes, since “chose”, the preceding direct object, is feminine, but intuitively not, since “quelque chose” is sort of treated as a compound, genderless construction, even though the neuter doesn’t exist in French as such.]
Sorry, couldn’t resist adding: the following really surprised me when I first saw it:
Il vient du Havre. (Le Havre)
Les 24 heures du Mans. (Le Mans)
The “le” belonging to the placename gets swallowed up into the preposition as if it were just a humble article! Logical as this is – it follows the rules – it seems strange to me; somehow I feel that the placename should be untouchable.
I think that the biggest problem may be that this just doesn’t make sense. The word quelque chose is technically genderless, but it doesn’t refer to anything specific, nor can it be used to refer to anything specific. If you are trying to translate “Something I did when I was younger…”, you are referring to something specific that happened, so you would use une chose instead: Une chose que j’ai faite quand j’étais plus jeune…
