# French question
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 17, 2007, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396 "2007-05-17T01:41:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 19
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/1 "2007-05-17T01:41:31Z")
I try to avoid asking such questions on here, but it’s really bothering me and I can’t find the answer. I wanted to know how you say “to be interested in someone” in French, so I looked it up in my dictionary. It gave “s’interesser a quelqu’un”. (I can’t type accented letters.) Simple enough. So if I wanted to say I was interested in Francois, I could say, “Je m’interesse a Francois.” If we were already talking about her, I might say, “Je me lui interesse.” It’s the opposite that’s throwing me off, namely the order of the pronouns. In the grammar section of my dictionary, it says _me_ comes before _lui_ which settles it for the previous sentence. But it puts _me_ and _se_ in the same list. So if I wanted to say, “She is interested in me,” should it be, “Elle me s’interesse,” or, “Elle se m’interesse”?
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### Author:  [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/2 "2007-05-17T02:14:56Z")
I don’t know the answer to the question but this phrase might be idiomatic depending on exactly what you mean. My dictionary provides the same translation but doesn’t specifically say it’s used for people. (Do you mean that you have a professional interest in this person’s work? A romantic interest?) It may or may not translate to the phrase you provided. That’s the danger of dictionary translations.
There was a [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=419880&highlight=french) recently where someone was asking for a touch-up of his note in French, and a poster noted that it was obvious that the writer was not a native French speaker because it contained word-by-word translations using phrases not used in French.
Also I think you must be talking about Françoise. 😉
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### Author:  [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/3 "2007-05-17T02:42:40Z")
You’re right. I could have sworn the dictionary said the phrase was used for people, but now that I look again, it says it’s for subjects and activities. Faux pas… Well now I’m wondering what phrase one would use (_etre amoureux_ perhaps, though that seems a bit strong) as well as which order me, te, se, etc go in when they’re in the same sentence, since they’re listed as having equal priority. (Some couldn’t be in the same sentence together, but some could.)
And I remember reading that other thread before anyone responded and thinking it was a Babelfish translation. I could have improved on it, but probably not got it right. My French is rough, but not that rough.
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### Author:  [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/4 "2007-05-17T02:46:40Z")
Assuming that \*s’intéresser à quelqu’un \* is the appropriate idiom (and I agree with the cautious approach espoused by **CookingWithGas** ), I’d suggest that \*elle s’intéresse à moi \* would be a better, less clumsy construction.
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### Author:  [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/5 "2007-05-17T03:03:24Z")
To be interested in meaning to like or wish to date is an English idiom that I don’t think replicates in French. Remember, that’s the language that uses the same word for ‘like’ and ‘love’ 🙂 I’d go with something along the lines of you want to know her better - and you’d use ‘connaitre’, not ‘savoir’. My Robert Collins says that chercher a connaitre quelqu’un is ‘try to get to know’. Sorry the accents are missing but Google will fill them in if you search on the words.
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### Author:  [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/6 "2007-05-17T03:10:42Z")
Je la cherche a connaitre. Yeah, that sounds about right.
So is everyone agreed that if _me_ and _se_ go in the same sentence, you’d just put the indirect object after _a_? I may run across another sentence where I have to do this some day.
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### Author:  [@detop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/detop)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/7 "2007-05-17T03:17:11Z")
[QUOTE=snailboy]
Je la cherche a connaitre. Yeah, that sounds about right.
[/QUOTE]
_Je cherche à la connaître_ or _J’essaie de la connaître_ would be better.
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### Author:  [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/8 "2007-05-17T13:24:04Z")
[QUOTE=detop]
_Je cherche à la connaître_ or _J’essaie de la connaître_ would be better.
[/QUOTE]
I agree this is an improvement. “J’aimerais mieux la connaître” might be more idiomatic, though. “Je la cherche a connaitre” is right out, I’m afraid, because that “la” placement implies you’re looking for her (“I’m looking for her…to know her”, or something like that).
Now, as for running “me” and “se” together… you generally won’t. Each is a pronoun used with \*les verbes pronominaux \*and I don’t see why you’d stack them. “Je me lave, elle se lave…” and so on. Or, in your case, “Je me connais, elle se connaît”. “J’aimerais la connaître” (“la” for the _pronom d’objet directe_) would be the simplest possible form. If you’re talking about a guy, it’s “J’aimerais le connaître” because the object is masculine.
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### Author:  [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/9 "2007-05-17T13:55:48Z")
To further advance (or confuse) the issue, here’s how you could express your feelings if someone asks about them:
I love her (or him, it’s said and written the same way): “Je l’aime”
I like her: “Je l’aime bien” or “Elle me plaît” (“Il me plaît” for a guy). Those are ways of toning down the emotion to a casual smoulder 😉 .
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### Author:  [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/10 "2007-05-17T14:47:42Z")
[QUOTE=xnylder]
I agree this is an improvement. “J’aimerais mieux la connaître” might be more idiomatic, though.
[/QUOTE]
I was thinking ‘voudrais’, myself. And sticking the ‘mieux’ at the end.
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### Author:  [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/11 "2007-05-17T22:10:39Z")
[QUOTE=xnylder]
Now, as for running “me” and “se” together… you generally won’t. Each is a pronoun used with \*les verbes pronominaux \*and I don’t see why you’d stack them. “Je me lave, elle se lave…” and so on. Or, in your case, “Je me connais, elle se connaît”. “J’aimerais la connaître” (“la” for the _pronom d’objet directe_) would be the simplest possible form. If you’re talking about a guy, it’s “J’aimerais le connaître” because the object is masculine.
[/QUOTE]
Well the thing is _se_ can only be a direct object, but _me_ can be a direct object or an indirect object. What if you have a sentence where himself or herself is the direct object and me is the indirect object? For the life of me, I can’t come up with an example, but as much as the Francophones like reflexive verbs, I know there has to be one.
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### Author:  [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/12 "2007-05-17T22:53:04Z")
I may be wrong, but I don’t think “_me_” can be used as an indirect object in the usual way. It’s been a while since I took a grammar class, so I’ve cracked open my old SOS workbook (_Synthèse en Orthographe et en Syntaxe_, yes Quebec French teachers can have a sense of humor) to check.
The basic test for an indirect object (_complément d’objet indirect_, or _COI_) is to look for the answer to the questions “_à qui?_” or “_à quoi?_” ("To whom? or “To what?”). When you want to use the first person as an indirect object, you use “_me_”. “_Claude a donné le crayon à moi. A qui est-ce que Claude à donné le crayon? Claude m’a donné le crayon._” (“Claude gave the pencil to me. To whom did Claude give the pencil? Claude gave me the pencil.”)
Technically, you can have “_me_” as part of a phrase in a _COI_, but it can’t be a \*COI \*by itself. “_Quelqu’un cherche à me taire._” (“Someone’s trying to shut me up”, which I’m sure someone must be doing by now. 🙂 )
So to rise to your challenge, one could say, “_Je me défie moi-meme à me connaître_” (I challenge myself to know myself), but that sounds way too wordy even for me.
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### Author:  [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/13 "2007-05-17T23:09:29Z")
[QUOTE=xnylder]
The basic test for an indirect object (_complément d’objet indirect_, or _COI_) is to look for the answer to the questions “_à qui?_” or “_à quoi?_” ("To whom? or “To what?”). When you want to use the first person as an indirect object, you use “_me_”. “_Claude a donné le crayon à moi. A qui est-ce que Claude à donné le crayon? Claude m’a donné le crayon._” (“Claude gave the pencil to me. To whom did Claude give the pencil? Claude gave me the pencil.”)
[/QUOTE]
Okay, so even if the following sentence doesn’t make sense or has a sexual meaning, how would you say, “Claude gives herself to me”?
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### Author:  [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2007, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/14 "2007-05-17T23:59:08Z")
Good one! You’re right, I’d say the most compact way of rendering that sentence is “_Claude se me donne_”. Idiomatically though, to avoid overloading pronouns, I’d probably write “_Claude se donne à moi_”. (And to be totally irrelevant but completist, Claude is more commonly used as a boy’s name, though Claudine and Marie-Claude are both pretty popular girls’ names.)
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### Author:  [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2007, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/15 "2007-05-18T00:47:21Z")
Actually, as far as I know you can’t say “Claude se me donne”; “Claude se donne à moi” is the only correct way. (I say “as far as I know” since I can’t count out the possibility that it be correct in some dialect I’m not aware of.)
On the other hand, you _can_ say “La pomme, tu me la donnes.” So you _may_ use two pronouns, one for the direct object and another for the indirect object. But not “me” and “se”, as far as I know.
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### Author:  [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2007, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/16 "2007-05-18T01:23:33Z")
[QUOTE=severus]
Actually, as far as I know you can’t say “Claude se me donne”; “Claude se donne à moi” is the only correct way.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not a native speaker but this jibes with my rustifying recollection of college French grammar— that you don’t double up the pronouns before the verb like that when it involves a reflexive verb, but must use that prepositional phrase at the end instead.
I’m not completely certain now whether it was stated as a rule or just a strong suggestion, though.
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### Author:  [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2007, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/17 "2007-05-18T02:26:09Z")
Maybe it’s a \*Joual \*thing (or the result of having lots of French second language speakers around), but I’m sure I’ve heard the stacked pronouns used. Then again, I have no problem believing Montrealers are capable of bending language rules, myself definately included. 😉
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### Author:  [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2007, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/18 "2007-05-18T05:13:50Z")
[QUOTE=xnylder]
Maybe it’s a \*Joual \*thing (or the result of having lots of French second language speakers around), but I’m sure I’ve heard the stacked pronouns used. Then again, I have no problem believing Montrealers are capable of bending language rules, myself definately included. 😉
[/QUOTE]
I can assure you that either you mis-remember, you mis-heard, or it wasn’t a native speaker, because there’s no way one would say “_se me_”. Even in Montreal.
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### Author:  [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2007, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-question/404396/19 "2007-05-18T10:56:57Z")
[QUOTE=jovan]
I can assure you that either you mis-remember, you mis-heard, or it wasn’t a native speaker, because there’s no way one would say “_se me_”. Even in Montreal.
[/QUOTE]
Some things I write can seem so reasonable at night, and so ridiculous in the morning light…Sorry, you’re right, I’m wrong, stacking pronouns that way is bad grammatical form. Mea culpa.