I’ll never forget a moment early on in my relationship with the man who would become my husband. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of days and so I thought I would sweetly (and honestly) tell him that I had missed him. “Je t’ai manqu\u00e9,” I told him and then nervously waited for his response. Instead of hearing him say the same thing back to me, however, confusion registered on his face. “Tu m’as manqu\u00e9?” he asked. This wasn’t going as well as I had hoped. And it would take what seemed like an interminable amount of time (probably more like several minutes) to figure out\u00a0what we were saying to one another.<\/p>\n
The problem is that I had WANTED to tell him that I missed him, but had instead told him that he had missed me. This is because the French verb\u00a0manquer<\/em> follows a different construction in French. Je te manque\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0je t’ai manqu\u00e9\u00a0<\/em>literally translates as “you miss me,” and “you missed me,” respectively. My poor husband was wondering what he had missed and why I was telling him this.<\/p>\n Manquer<\/em> is one of the most difficult verbs for beginner French learners to use. You have to flip the construction of the sentence in order to achieve the meaning in English. If you would like to say “I miss you,” then, the translation is\u00a0tu me manques<\/em>, which can be somewhat confusing to English speakers because the\u00a0tu<\/em> (you) comes first in the sentence. However, there is a reason for this seemingly confusing sentence structure. In French, the verb\u00a0manquer<\/em> is not indicating who is missing whom, but rather indicates\u00a0who is missing.\u00a0<\/em>Thus, the meaning of\u00a0tu me manques<\/em> in French is actually\u00a0something like “you are missing to me.” (To be more technical about this,\u00a0manquer\u00a0<\/em>is actually\u00a0manquer \u00e0\u00a0<\/em>quelq’un\/quelque chose;\u00a0<\/em>thus it is intransitive in the above example. An intransitive verb does not use or need a direct object, while a transitive verb can use a direct object.)<\/p>\n While it is incorrect to use the transitive form of\u00a0manquer\u00a0<\/em>in this example (je manque \u00e0 toi<\/em> is incorrect), you can use the transitive form of\u00a0manquer\u00a0<\/em>when you are not using only first or second pronouns. Thus, it is correct to say\u00a0tu manque \u00e0 ton p\u00e8re\u00a0<\/em>(literally, “you are missed by your father” or “your father misses you”). This\u00a0direct object clarifies the meaning of this sentence for non-native French speakers.<\/p>\n Have you ever used the verb\u00a0manquer\u00a0<\/em>to say something you didn’t mean? Leave your stories in the comments below!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ll never forget a moment early on in my relationship with the man who would become my husband. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of days and so I thought I would sweetly (and honestly) tell him that I had missed him. “Je t’ai manqu\u00e9,” I told him and then nervously waited for his…<\/p>\n