French language Q&A Forum

Salut, ca sera utile d'avoir plus de questions dans le mini-test au bout de la page. En ce moment il y en a deux - mais le lecon s'agit? de plusiers facons d'utiliser rappeler. Rappeler - c'est un casse tete. Desolée - pas de clavier francais. 

Salut

This lesson is giving me more grey hairs! I get it wrong constantly!

On the test, you ask “How would you say "You remind him of Audrey Hepburn." ?
the correct answer is: Tu lui rappelles Audrey Hepburn.

My answer is marked as incorrect “Tu rappelles Audrey Hepburn à lui.”

But in the lesson you say:

 Il rappelle son ex à Maria. He reminds Maria of her ex.

Elle rappelle sa sœur à Alain. She reminds Alain of his sister.

Thanks

Best, Laura 

I notice that my answers in this lesson might as well be random.

This lesson opens with the statement:

“In French, there are two different structures to express "reminding", depending on whether we mean to be reminded of [something] or to prompt someone to remember [to do something].”

Let’s call to be reminded of something ‘A’ and to prompt someone to remember ‘B’

The structure of A is:

“rappeler + person one's reminded of + à + person being reminded”

unless an object pronoun appears in the sentence. If there is, the structure of A becomes:

”me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur + rappeler + person one is reminded of"

So there are two different sentence structures  for A.

When we want to prompt someone to remember (B), the structure is:

"rappeler + à + person being reminded + de+ [infinitif]”

unless an object pronoun appears in the sentence. If there is, the structure of B becomes:

“me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur + rappeler + de + [infinitif]”

Note this involves two different sentence structures in the case of B. 

Each of these sentence structures differ, one from the others, so in fact there are four structures involved in French to express reminding.

As the lesson is presented, a student must retain these four only slightly different structures and identify where to use them in order to progress with this lesson.

Were the lesson split in two - using the A and B situations described above, the student would need to retain and identify only two structures at a time, leading to a better chance of succeeding in A before progressing to B.

I imagine this would lead to this lesson attracting less confusion and improved learning. Or am I missing something? Is there a logic or pattern that evades me?

You state there are two different structures involved here. In fact there are four:

1. "rappeler + person one's reminded of + à + person being reminded" ;

2 "me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur + rappeler + person one is reminded of " ;

3 "rappeler + à + person being reminded + de + [infinitif]";

4 "me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur + rappeler + de + [infinitif] "

Could this not be split into two lessons referring to A - 1 and 2, then B - 3 and 4? That would give struggling students the opportunity to crack each structure individually. As it stands, one has to hold and identify four structures simultaneously.

Or am I missing something? Is there a hidden logic that I have failed to spot?

I'm returning to this lesson after being away from it awhile. And I have the same concern as before: The examples do not tie to the ones on the tests. Terribly confusing. Sometimes using "a", other times not. What gives? I can't be the only one rattled by this, Could someone please simplify this for me? Thanks.

Rex reminds Anna of her dog.

Rex rappelle son chien à Anna.

The English sentence nearly made my head explode :-), it seems really ambiguous to me. In this example it's slightly clearer because Rex and Anna are different sexes, but if you wrote:

Rex reminds Chris of his dog.

Rex rappelle son chien à Chris.

it becomes really ambiguous. I imagine it would be said by someone (say Bob) talking about about three other parties (Rex, Chris and a dog). It would be clearer if there was more context as to who or what Rex, Chris and the dog were, but as it stands it can be interpreted multiple ways. It's unclear to me if the dog belongs to Rex or Chris, and the meaning changes depending on whether Rex is a dog or a person. The sentence needs a bit more context to try and remove the ambiguity e.g.:

Bob said that his dog Rex reminds Chris of his dog.

It seems the French is less ambiguous in this case, and you need to be careful with translating the French into English.

Why is “You remind him of Audrey Hepburn." ? Translated into “Tu lui rappelles Audrey Hepburn.”

Isn’t it missing an “à” as per lesson guidelines? Shouldn’t it be “Tu rappelles Audrey Hepburn à lui”?

In the context of this lesson, 'remind [someone] of [someone or something]' means 'put unwittingly [someone] in mind of the subject's resemblance to [someone else or something else]'. The meaning in French, although the grammatical construction is different from English in terms of direct and indirect objects, is the same as this.

But what about the alternative English usage 'remind of' meaning 'cause consciously [someone] to remember to give attention to [a person or thing]'. Often this is expressed in a sentence such as "Jack reminded me that my uncle is coming next week", but could be shortened to "Jack reminded me of [or about] my uncle's visit".

How would the last sentence be translated?

If I remind you of your nanny is 'Je vous rappelle votre nounou.' What is 'I remind your nanny of you'? Is it 'Je rappelle vous à votre nounou' but I don't think this is correct!