Le week-end dernier

Hey everyone!
Time for another post here, as I try to put into practice all of the bits and pieces that I've been learning over the last week or so. This week was mainly taken up with trying to get to grips with adverbs to provide a bit more texture to my French, as well as the adverbial pronouns y and en. Don't worry if it all sounds a bit like gibberish to you at the moment, I'm planning to write up a blog here soon that pulls together all the stuff I've been learning like this, so I'll explain all in due course!

For today's blog, I thought I'd continue much in the vein of my previous, introductory post, and present a bit of a written thing that I'll then deconstruct. I've been watching a lot of Learn French with Alexa on youtube, some quality content there presented in a beautifully clear and concise way! She has a series of videos on her channel that presents model answers to GCSE French questions, and I thought it would be a good place to build from on my own blog here, so I've started with this one:


Qu'est-ce que tu as fait le week-end dernier? What did you do last weekend?

Le week-end dernier, je prenais soin du bébé dans l'ensemble. Le week-end, j'essaie donner une pause à ma femme, qui prend soin d'elle pendant la semaine. C'est travaille dur, mais Phoebe est charmante, et ça vaut le peine!

Samedi soir, on a regardé un film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, c'était géant. J'aime les soirées cinéma, je préfère regarder les films chez moi par opposition à les regarde au cinéma, parce que j'aime le petit confort! Cependant, j'aime y aller quelquefois pour un grand film.

Dimanche, j'ai mangé les œufs pochés pour le petit déjeuner. Pendant la semaine, je n'ai pas de temps pour le petit déjeuner en d'habitude, donc je prends l'occasion quand je peux faire. C'est le repas que j'aime le plus, et j'aimerais le manger plus souvent. 

J'ai continué mes études en français aussi, et j'ai commencé écrire ce blog sur mes efforts. Ce faisant, je suis inspiré à m'améliorer.

I'm very excited about this answer, as it has a lot of bits and bobs that I like. I'm not sure about some of the word order - so if you can help, please do leave a comment!

Le week-end dernier, je prenais soin du bébé dans l'ensemble.
I just want to start by pointing something out here - the positioning of the word "dernier" can change the meaning of the sentence, so if it is placed before the noun - le dernier week-end - it means the last, final weekend. With this word order - le week-end dernier - it means the most recent weekend. There are a whole bunch of adjectives like this, and it's one of the things that makes French both interesting and maddening to learn!

Anyway! This first sentence pretty much sums up life right now, and if I continue to write about myself here, you'll quickly grow tired of hearing about it! I was looking after the baby in the main. I'm not sure about the placement for the expression "dans l'ensemble", though I think it's probably best left on the end of the sentence. While the context of this question suggests an answer in the perfect tense, I've started it in the imperfect, because the action of looking after the baby was not done once and was then over, but rather it was a continuous action for the period in question. 

Le week-end, j'essaie donner une pause à ma femme, qui prend soin d'elle pendant la semaine. 
Here's an interesting point. The addition of "le" at the start here gives the notion of habitual action - so "le week-end" in this instance means "on the weekends". Anyway! I try to give my wife a break, as she looks after our daughter all week - that's what I'm trying to say here. Confession time; a lot of this took some fair old dictionary-work (something I'm going to cover in a future blog), and the only phrase I could find was "to take a break", so I'm guessing "to give a break" would be donner une pause, but that is a guess!

I like the little idiom that ends the opening paragraph - ça vaut le peine. Wherever I can, I like to sprinkle these things in, and it's been something of a focus for my French learning journey (I'll be covering this in a future blog, as well!)

Samedi soir, on a regardé un film
Next, we watched a film on Saturday night. I came across this somewhere online a couple of months ago - while "we" in French is translated as "nous", in modern French this is being replaced more and more with "on", the third person pronoun meaning "one" or "we" in the general sense of "people". However, used in this way, "on" gives a notion of exclusivity, so when I'm talking about my wife and myself doing something to a group (such as you fine people online), I want to exclude you from the verb, because it wasn't all of us doing it, it was just my wife and I. If I wanted to include you all, then it would be "nous". I'm not sure how accurate this is, and whether it's widely accepted or just a local thing, but I wanted to bring it up here and see if we could get a conversation going, so let me know in the comments if you know anything more on this!

J'aime les soirées cinéma
Who doesn't love a movie night?! Even though the context of this response is "what did I do", as in the past tense, I wanted to slip into the present tense for moments of explanation like this, as I think it gives more context and allows for some level of nuance. If you watched the video above, you'll see Alexa prefers you to stick to the tense of the question, but while that's probably more important for a three or four sentence spoken answer, for a written missive like this, I like to play around a bit more - and to show off, as you'll see!

Cependant, j'aime y aller quelquefois pour un grand film
Oh, I like this sentence a lot! It's definitely in the realms of showing off, as I'm using conjunctions and adverbial pronouns, adverbs and adjectives! "J'aime y aller" means "I like to go there", and makes use of the adverbial pronoun that I mentioned at the start of this post. French has a ton of pronouns, and there's something very French about using en and y like this - to my mind, at least! Also - take note: almost all French adjectives go after the nouns that they describe, except for a small handful, of which "grand" is one. It's the sort of thing you just need to learn the list for, really.

J'ai mangé les œufs pochés pour le petit déjeuner
I wanted to go to town a bit with this part - mainly because it's about food, and who doesn't love to talk about food?! Firstly, an aside - "eggs" in French is œufs, not oeufs. I've read somewhere that to not type the ligature is considered a spelling mistake, in the same way as to miss off accents from words. Interesting, huh?

So, I had poached eggs for breakfast. Normally, I don't have the time for breakfast in the mornings, so when possible I like to have a proper breakfast. That's pretty much the sum of the paragraph there, but I couldn't resist getting a bit fancy here:

J'aimerais le manger plus souvent
"I would like to eat it more often". It's the conditional mood, folks! I'm planning to cover this in a separate post, for sure, but I thought I'd point it out here as being a bit fancy - again, as Alexa says in her video, when you can go into other tenses and moods, it's always good to show off a bit! When learning French at school, I remember we were taught "je voudrais", as "I would like", but that was the sum total of our lessons on the conditional. It's great to be able to give more depth to answers with stuff like this, and it allows you to really go beyond the sort of dull, monochrome responses.

J'ai commencé écrire ce blog
Ah yes, how could I not mention the fact that, last weekend, I started this blog?! Hopefully it's something that will continue for a long time to come, anyway!

Ce faisant, je suis inspiré à m'améliorer
To finish with, then, I've dropped in another adverb (the answer is peppered with them), "ce faisant", which means "in doing so". Splendid!

Whether or not I have improved from the first post, I'll let you all decide for yourselves! Like I said at the beginning, I'm hoping to use these sorts of posts to put into practice what I've been learning over the course of the week, so I've been trying to drop in some adverbs where possible. It has mainly been an exercise in the passé composé, or perfect past tense. This will be the subject of my next blog, I think, where I attempt to explain what it is (in order to cement the idea into my own mind!) So look out for that one in the coming days!

Thanks for reading - à bientôt!