Jean Tardieu

Petits problèmes et travaux pratiques

travaux pratiques – In this scolastic context, “exercises.” Basically, it means: labor(s) you undertake in order to gain skill at doing something, in preparation for doing it for real. (See the examples given at Linguee.fr.)

Étant donné – Literally “being given,” but in English we will just say “Given.” The subject of the verb is the following noun, but the participle donné never agrees with it. See number 3 in this section: Étant donné deux points.

que se passe-t-il – The que is the short form of the interrogative pronoun “What?” as subject. The less literary way to ask this question would use the more usual long form of the pronoun:

Qu’est-ce qui se passe (derrière?)

To make it quite clear that que is here a subject, not a direct object, it gets doubled with the “fake” subject il.

For more on these forms, you can go here, where I talk about interrogatives at some length.

se passe – Se passer is a pronominal verb “of the fourth kind.” See the topic Pronominal Verbs of Idiomatic Meaning; read the entire file if you haven’t done so yet. Se passer is a verb that should be part of your permanent wordhoard. It is used again below in Problème d’Algèbre à deux inconnues Nº 1.

derrière – Though in general French, in contrast to English, tends not to use exactly the same form for different parts of speech (e.g., English “man” can be a noun or a verb), it makes an exception for some prepositions, which can also be used as adverbs. This is true, for instance, of après (“after” or “afterwards”), and here of derrière, which really means “behind…IT (= the wall).” On this matter, see (if you’re interested) my answer to a Quora question.

le plus long chemin – To bone up on superlatives, see the Language file Degrees of Comparison.

chemin – This word corresponds to the English “path,” the original meaning being perhaps an earthen track, at any rate a way you would pursue on foot, but it also gets some more general (also some metaphorical) uses. For instance:

Pouvez-vous m’indiquer le chemin de San Jose? = “Can you show me the way to San Jose?”

l’un de l’autre – The preposition de has here the force of “from.” Literally, “the one from the other,” but you shouldn’t translate in that clumsy way.

pour – When pour precedes an infinitive (as it does in this petit problème and in many of the others), generally it means “in order to, so as to.” See the introductory section of the Language file Infinitives Following Verbs. For yet other uses of pour, some of them rather strange, see the Language topicConcessive Pour.

comment faire – Translating these words literally as “how to do” would be really too clunky.

déplacer – To our English verb “move” in its various uses correspond a great number of different verbs in French. When you’re talking about moving a physical object in space, the verb is déplacer.

sans que – The conjunction sans que requires the subjunctive; see, if you wish, the Language file Conjunctions in Groups.

s’en aperçoive – Ordinary non-pronominal apercevoir has the basic meaning “to catch sight of.” s’apercevoir de is one of those idiomatic pronominal verbs that cannot be literally translated (see this Language topic); it means “to realize, to be/become aware of.” It is completed by a prepositional phrase beginning with de. Example:

Elle ne s’apercevait pas de la gêne de ses hôtes. (She was unaware of the discomfort of her guests.)

The en in Tardieu’s sentence stands for something like de ce déplacement (of this movement).

For conjugation of this verb, see the topic Devoir/Concevoir Type Irregular Verbs (scroll down to point C).

fait le tour – faire le tour de quelque chose means “do a circuit around something, go around so as to see all the sides of something.” Distinguish:

• le tour – related to our word “turn,” and sometimes translated by it;
• la tour – “tower”

« gagne » – Gagner du temps (to save time) is a standard expression in French, so why the guilllemets? Tardieu is making a joke of some kind… Possibly he wants to make us think, confusedly, of the word’s other meanings (“gain, get, earn, win…”).

Au bout de – With an amount of time following, it can be translated simply as “After.” Literally, “at the end of.” Learn: le bout = “physical end of something, particularly something longish.” Also: un bout de papier = “a scrap of paper.”

sera-t-il revenu – Future perfect (futur antérieur) of the verb revenir. See, if you need to, the file House of Being Verbs and the topic The Other Compound Tenses.

Several French verbs are translated as “return,” but they have differing functions:

• revenir = “to come back to one’s point of origin (OR: back to where the speaker is)”
• retourner – “to go back to a place NOT where the speaker is”
• rentrer – short for rentrer à la maison = “to return (OR come back) home, to come back inside”

pour ne pas déchirer – The standard way to make an infinitive negative in French is to place both negative particles in front of the (simple) infinitive. If you translate this phrase with an English infinitive, PUH-LEASE try to avoid the hateful split infinitive, and say “not to tear” rather than the ineuphonious “to NOT tear.”

There is another such negatived infinitive in La Vie de tous les jours Nº 1:

…pour ne pas paraître…

la pointe – Feminine pointe (with an e) is something sharp that can pierce or prick. The basic meaning of masculine le point (see L’Espace Nos. 2 + 3 above) is I think a small mark such as might be made with a stylus. Hence, in addtion to meaning a mathematical point, French point is used for the punctuation mark at the ends of sentences (English “period”) and for “dot” in web addresses.

pointe here is in the singular, but you should translate it as plural in English.

troncs de cône – Literally, “trunks of cones,” which presumably would be “truncated cones” in English. Such are cones that have been sliced by planes, both parallel and not parallel to the base of the cone, to illustrate certain features of geometry. However, here is a problem: If a cone has had its top sliced off by a plane going through it, it won’t have a point anymore on which one might snag one’s clothes. So…? My solution: the author is thinking of diagrams in which the plane is shown dividing the cone, but the top portion of the cone (with the point) is represented as still being there.

inconnues – The past participle of connaître (with the negative prefix in- added) is here used as a noun, in exactly the same way as we would do in English.

il va se passer – The il is a fake subject; the real subject is the indefinite expression je ne sais quoi.

se passer – See the very first petit problème above.

je ne sais quoi, je ne sais quand – Indefinite expressions, the first a pronoun, the second an adverb. See the topic The je-ne-sais-q– Indefinite Expressions.

Construisez – For verbs like this one, see the topic Construire-Type Verbs (and the Conduire-Type section preceding it).

à partir de – “beginning with” or “starting from.” As I say elsewhere (Dormir-type Verbs), “In addition to meaning ‘to leave (a place)’ (partir d’un endroit), partir de also means ‘to begin from (a certain point).'”

sachant – The present participle of savoir. See The –Ant Form of the Verb. The form sachant also occurs below in La Vie de tous les jours Nº 3.

Lorsque – (The s is pronounced: [lᴐrskə]) Lorsque, like quand, can be translated as “when,” but  it is used in preference to quand when the idea (even if only implicitly) is “whenever.”

supposez le problème résolu – Apparently the current English expression for this approach to mathematical problem-solving is called “working backwards” (from the solution). (Here is an explanation by Math Geek Mama.)

quand même – Should be part of your permanent wordhoard.

feriez – If you’re shaky on the conditional mood, go here.

quel – If necessary, consult the Language file The Whats of French, particularly Part III.

vice – See this topic. Tardieu’s proposed syllogism has in fact more than just one vice de construction.

or – A weak adversative (a weak “but”), this form (derived ultimately from Latin hora) is used to introduce a new thought or piece of information, that does not however contradict what has previously been provided. “Now” or “Well” will often do as translations. (The first meanings given for or, conj. at WordReference.com [“but, yet”] are to be avoided.) In Aristotelian logic, it is used to introduce the minor premise, just as donc is used to introduce the conclusion. The classic example that Tardieu is making fun of here goes this way:

Tous les hommes sont mortels.
Or, Socrate est un homme.
Donc, Socrate est mortel.

usuel – A basic meaning of French usuel is “in frequent or common use.”

bien en évidence – “plainly visible.”Watch out for the adverbial form, évidemment,² which means “obviously” (whereas our English “evidently” is equivalent to “apparently”).

de face, de profil, de trois-quarts – These are expressions used for portraits, indicating the orientation of the head. (Observe how the preposition de can be used to create adverbial expressions of manner.)I suppose behind the expression de trois-quarts is the notion that in the half-circle or so in which the head can be turned, starting at one profile position (left or right) a person turns hizzer head three quarters of the way to the other profile position.

Reportez-vous – The element -port- used in this and many other verbs (porter, apporter, emporter, rapporter…) means “to carry.” Sometimes apporter will be translated as “to bring,” but it means (in proper French) bringing something you could, in theory, carry, hence not a person. The element properly used with people is -men/mèn- (mener, amener, emmener).

un réverbère s’approche de vous – A highly fantastical circumstance.

s’approche de –s’approcher de and approcher de are both used to mean “to come closer to a person or thing.” There is a difference between them, of some sort; I believe the pronominal verb implies a bit more personal intention on the part of the approacher. The de is required in both; approcher une chose (direct object) means “to draw a thing closer.”

du feu – Direct object of the verb demande. The du is the partitive article, regarding which see (if you haven’t already) my elaborate Language file on the subject.

However, do NOT translate du feu here as “(some) fire.”

comment vous y prenez-vous pour – The TLFi³ gives as one of the meanings of se prendre à as “to begin” (se mettre à); however, in this particular formula (comment vous y prenez-vous pour [+ infinitif]) it means something like “How do (or would) you do such-and-such?” See the list of examples at Linguee.fr.

paraître  – For a bit on the conjugation of this and similar verbs, see the topic Connaître-Type Verbs.

à la longue barbe blanche – Ever since the depiction of him in the Chanson de Roland (c1100), Charlemagne has been pictured by the French has having a long white beard. (He is not, however, pictured as wearing a white apron.)

vêtu – Past participle of irregular vêtir.

Or – See gloss to La Logique Nº 2 above.

ce n’est autre que – See, if you need to, regarding the ne…que construction, this topic and this very much longer Language file.

tout de même – On expressions with tout, many of which you should learn permanently, see the Language file Tout sur tout.

journées – There are two words for “day” in French, one masculine (jour) and one feminine. In general, the difference is that the masculine form refers to day as a point or unit of time, while the feminine form refers to the content or experience of the day (what you fill it up with). Here, where what you will do during your days is the issue, the feminine form is clearly appropriate.

Actual usage does not always illustrate this distinction clearly. Why, for instance, when greeting a person, do we say Bonjour!, but when taking leave say Bonne journée? The latter might make sense in terms of the distinction, but not particularly the former.

appartient – If you need refreshing on the irregular but very useful verb tenir and its derivatives, go here.

trouvez-vous – How does one know that the form vous is an indirect object, since this conjunctive⁴ form is indifferently direct or indirect object? Because un remplaçant is already occupying the place of direct object, so that vous has to be the only possibility left: indirect object.

surprendre – As I say elsewhere, this verb can mean not only

1. “to surprise,” but also
2. “to come upon by surprise,”
3. “to take by surprise = to ambush,” and
4. “to overhear”

se glissent – The ordinary, non-pronominal form of the verb glisser means “to slip,” as for instance on ice or on a banana; se glisser means more specifically to slip oneself into a place. To be sure, in English we will translate it as simple “to slip (in/into).”

que – Both times, que is the direct object form of the relative pronoun, the antecedent being poids. See if needed the Language file Relative Pronouns.

traînez – The basic meaning of traîner is to drag something after one.

sur – In this case the preposition sur should perhaps be translated as “above” or “over” rather than the more usual “on.” (I nowhere see “above” or “over” given as meanings for sur at WordReference.com.)

c’est – The indefinite subject pronoun ce is here (as so often) merely standing in for the noun subject (le temps); the French feel the need for it if they pause (as they may do, for emphasis) after saying the subject. Do not translate it.

de l’argent – The de l’ is, once again (as the du in La Vie de tous les jours No. 1 above), a partitive article. See the Language file on the Partitive Article.

cours – Learn to distinguish le cours (from Latin cursus) in its various meanings from la cour (from Latin curia).

sensible – A veritable, very treacherous faux ami. Learn these distinctions!—

• sensible = 1) (speaking of a person:) “sensitive; full of or capable of feeling emotion”; 2) (speaking of external conditions, potentially quantifiable:) “perceptible, noticeable.” (You could sum it up by saying that sensible means capable of feeling OR capable of being felt.)
• sensé – “sensible”

To help you remember what sensible means in French, think of the title of Jane Austen’s first published novel: Sense and Sensibility.

(To the first part of this question, Meursault, the hero of Camus’s l’Etranger, would answer an emphatic YES.⁵ See also Charles Trenet’s Les enfants s’ennuient le dimanche.)