One of the things I like the most in French is how we use the verb “miss”. It is build differently in a sentence than in English, when we mean “Imissyou” in English, we say “Tu (you) me (I) manques” in French.There’s an inversion of the pronouns, so the object of the missing actually becomes the centre of the sentence.
What I found truly amazing is that in that way, saying “Tu me manques” actually means at its origins “a piece of me is missing when you are not near”. And that for me, is one of the most beautiful and poetic thing in the French language.
(I had to reblog to reply)
Reflective pronouns are just that, pronouns that correspond to -self pronouns - e.g. myself, yourself, etc.
I am certainly not a French teacher either, so, I asked a native speaker friend of mine. His take is that the translation is “You are missed by me”, and that while your interpretation is beautiful, it’s not correct. There’s no such implication.
Manqueris a verb with many meanings - to lack, to miss (in time), to fail to do something, and, of course, to miss emotionally - manquer à. Paul manque à sa mère - Paul is missed by his mother. Since à generally corresponds to the “to” preposition, we can reasonably infer that the literal translation is simply “you are missing to me”.
I am, actually, also a native speaker and it is true that most of the time we use the preposition “à”, as in “to”. But in some specific cases, when we don’t use explicitly the object, the literary explanation and analysis can refer to what I said earlier— i do agree with you though I’m not trying to contradict anyone here! I think your explanation is more grammatically correct while mine is more based on a literary analysis ? Anyways saying “Tu me manques” or as you said, “tu manques à moi” (which we don’t say as it’s not that natural to say in French) still implies that something is missing withinyou.
Hope it clarified a bit !
Ah, I see. Thank you; I very much appreciate the in-depth replies.
Some expressions do, if that makes sense, arise from shortened ones - e.g. “prithee” for “I pray thee”. So there might, actually, be an equivalent of such for “manquer à” implying what you’ve said.
One of the things I like the most in French is how we use the verb “miss”. It is build differently in a sentence than in English, when we mean “Imissyou” in English, we say “Tu (you) me (I) manques” in French.There’s an inversion of the pronouns, so the object of the missing actually becomes the centre of the sentence.
What I found truly amazing is that in that way, saying “Tu me manques” actually means at its origins “a piece of me is missing when you are not near”. And that for me, is one of the most beautiful and poetic thing in the French language.
(I had to reblog to reply)
Reflective pronouns are just that, pronouns that correspond to -self pronouns - e.g. myself, yourself, etc.
I am certainly not a French teacher either, so, I asked a native speaker friend of mine. His take is that the translation is “You are missed by me”, and that while your interpretation is beautiful, it’s not correct. There’s no such implication.
Manqueris a verb with many meanings - to lack, to miss (in time), to fail to do something, and, of course, to miss emotionally - manquer à. Paul manque à sa mère - Paul is missed by his mother. Since à generally corresponds to the “to” preposition, we can reasonably infer that the literal translation is simply “you are missing to me”.
