Hi,
I was looking for example sentences in French that avoid using the word 'si" (if). Is it possible like it is in German?
Kommt er spät nach Hause, bekommt/kriegt er Ärger.
(If he arrives home late, he’ll get an earful)
I look forward to your feedback.
Are you just trying to express a conditional situation without si, or are you specifically looking for some kind of subjunctive conditional (with inverted word order)? I know very little French, but for the former, you might be able to use quand. As for the latter, I don’t think you’re going to find it.
Note that English does something similar, using should:*Should he arrive home late, he’ll get an earful.*I think this is something particular to Germanic languages, so I don’t think you’ll find it in French, but I could be totally wrong.
I’m trying to avoid if possible starting a sentence with “si”. But if may not be possible.
I’m not French but German but I’ll risk a WAG:
I think you could make the first part a question to avoid the “si/if/falls”.
Example:
FR: Il rentre tard? Il aura des problèmes!
EN: He will be home late? He’ll be in trouble!
I think you could also you “en cas”: “En cas de retour tardif, il aura des problèmes.”
But that might be me trying to press German sentence constructions into French.
You can say:
Rentrerait-il tard, qu’il se ferait gronder
or
Qu’il rentre tard, et il se fera gronder
But this type of constructions isn’t really used frequently.
Thank you Oukile. Thank you all. Very helpful.
The ‘should’ is equivalent to ‘if’ in that case, but in dialogue you’ll find it used without any conditional in front, “He arrives home late, he’ll get an earful”. Inflection helps clarify the meaning, and when I hear such things they sound like they’re being said with a German accent just as my grandmother would have used the form.
Here are some sentences using the same constructions that you may encounter in books or common language:
Me proposeriez-vous de m’accompagner, que je serais rejouie
Qu’il essaie de m’attaquer, et il verra