Why is prochain incorrect?

Question

Jeudi, elle a un rendez-vous. -Tu veux dire ce jeudi ou ________ ?

A bit puzzled.. I answered this with le jeudi prochain and marked as incorrect.. wanted le jeudi d'après..but checking in Linguee.. it gives prochain in its examples.

Cécile Janty-Davies · Accepted Answer

Hi Mark,
When to use 'suivant' and not 'prochain' is quite tricky and this is a very common mistake made by English speakers.
In temporal terms you will use 'prochain' when you mean 'next' in relation to today: 
jeudi prochain = next Thursday 
which is 12th August ( today being  Saturday 7th August).
 
la semaine prochaine = week beginning 9th August in relation to today 
but you will say

'la semaine suivante' for week beginning 16th August ...

In the example situation ( in an unknown time frame), you will use 'suivant -
... ce jeudi ou le jeudi suivant = ... this Thursday or the following Thursday 
Or
... le jeudi d'après 
which are both accepted.
 
Hope this helps!

Jim Jones · Answer

Deleted. Already answered by Cécile.

Mark Pickin · Answer

Hello Cécile.. thank you for the clarification of when to use suivant.. but, if I am getting this right.. you are agreeing that jeudi prochain would be correct in the context of this or next.. as the time frame is properly defined.. but my problem is that Kwiziq has marked that answer incorrect and demanded d'après... if there is a this Thursday, ce jeudi, jeudi prochain has to mean next Thursday.. which is what I am trying to say.. otherwise, if it is Monday, when is jeudi prochain?

Jim Jones · Answer

Hi Mark,I deleted my previous offer because I thought that Cécile had covered all of the options.However, if we were to write "prochain jeudi" this would mean the following Thursday as in a series of Thursdays going forward.Prochain can be used on either side of the day and changes the meaning.Hope this helps.Jim

Mark Pickin · Answer

Thanks Jim.. clearly I am expressing myself poorly.. if it is Monday and I say "ce jeudi et le jeudi prochain " does or does that not mean this Thursday(3days) and next Thursday? (10days).. and, if wrong, what does it mean?

Chris Wirt · Answer

You don't use the article with jeudi. The definite article is only used when specifying every Thursday (i.e., Thursdays)

Cécile Janty-Davies · Answer

Hi Mark,
I am really not sure of the distinction you are making. In the question, it can only be 'suivant' or 'd'après' and the English was -
this Thursday or the following one? 
 ( to help you) 
 
It is a bit the same as with yesterday and the day before. When telling a story you will not use 'yesterday' but the day before which could have been two weeks ago as clearly 'yesterday' is yesterday, a point in real-time in relation to 'today'.
 Hope this helps!

Tiffany P · Answer

It has been a while since this question was asked but I recently completed this exercise and had the same question as Mark regarding why jeudi prochain was an incorrect answer for this question. It seems the answers so far haven’t addressed the confusion stemming from the different uses of the words “next” in English and “prochain” in French.

In the context of the sentence: Tu veux dire ce jeudi ou ….

In English we would say, do you mean this Thursday or next Thursday? As a native English speaker we naturally want to directly translate the “next” in this sentence to “prochain” in French. But that’s the problem. In this context, prochain means the first Thursday after the current day. So if this question is being asked on Tuesday, jeudi prochain means in two days. Of course in English if it’s Tuesday and we say next Thursday we mean the Thursday of the following week. That’s the difference.

Answering this question by asking ce jeudi ou jeudi prochain is incorrect because in this context (imagine the question is asked on Tuesday) they would have the same meaning.

Hopefully this helps someone.

Hamilton Waymire · Answer

I can’t help thinking that Kwiziq is being a bit dogmatic about the distinction between jeudi prochain and le jeudi d’après. Surely French speakers don’t all see this the same way, witness e.g. https://www.margatraductions.ch/que-veut-on-dire-par-vendredi-prochain/. This dogmatism is a bit odd given their surprising lenience in other topics (e.g. in considering “je me rappelle de Pierre” correct French usage). Surely if someone opposes “ce jeudi” to “jeudi prochain” as in the case at hand, everyone will interpret the speaker as referring to the Thursday immediately following the time of speech and the next one after that, respectively.