Depuis : since ...
Il y a : It's been
E.C. 发表于 2009-6-11 22:30
我是这么记的。
Je suis arrivé en France il y a X an(s)==I arrived in France X years ago.
Je suis ici depuis X an(s).= I've been here for X years
Je suis ici depuis 2000 =I've been here since 2000.
但是。。。也有
Je suis arrivé en France depuis 3 ans。这样的说法。
之前poisson有帮我解答过，只能死记硬背了。
12#E.C.
Tks. And I meant no offense...
Let me make it clear.
u said il y a = it's been
Well I said not really.
Maybe the sentence that I gave was not so good, however, I just wantedto point out that 'il y a' can mean 'it's been' only when it's followed by'que', which is the very thing that I wanted and want u to prove mewrong.
Don't tell me that u r an American guy this time. I'm sooo scared lol:
Seriously, if il y a=it's been, would u pls tell me how we can put the following sentences into English?
JE N'AI PAS FAIM CAR J'AI MANGÉ IL Y A MOINS D'UNE HEURE
J'AI ACHETÉ CET APPARTEMENT IL Y A TROIS ANS
IL Y A DEUX JOURS, J'AI RENCONTRÉ LE RESPONSABLE DE LA MAISON FRANÇAISE
========
and one more question...that still bothers me...cited as follows
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=209187 Cela fait quatre ans qu’Hélène participe à des ateliers.
Or you could use another structure. Il y a quatre ans qu’Hélène participe à des ateliers.
I'm not a native American of course far be it from me to tell u that.
On another topic,
If i read properly my post , u'd notice I wanted u to be focused on my example sentences :
Je suis arrivé en France il y a X an(s).
Je suis ici depuis X an(s).
Depuis : since ...
Il y a : It's been -> It's been 10 years since I arrived here.
Well in fact this is not that clear, because we can use both translations in English.
It would be bad policy to consider either these are thoroughly correct, however those are not our overriding concerns.
How I would translate
JE N'AI PAS FAIM CAR J'AI MANGÉ IL Y A MOINS D'UNE HEURE
J'AI ACHETÉ CET APPARTEMENT IL Y A TROIS ANS
(NB : Many ways of translating do exist)
I'm not hungry cuz I ate less than 1 hour ago
I bought this apartment three years ago / it's been 3 years since i bought this apartment.
So what you can notice is that it's been is used when you want to express a long duration.
The example u gave me is often found on "English websites".Cela fait quatre ans qu’Hélène participe à des ateliers.
Or you could use another structure.
Il y a quatre ans qu’Hélène participe à des ateliers.
First of all , foreigners always learn useless things when learning foreign languages.
You will seldom hear someone say : Il y a quatre qu'elle fait ça. Or maybe in books , or it sounds more likely peasant gossips ("Ouais , 3 ans qu'elle dit ça !!!).
We usually say : ça fait / cela fait ... que
And why we don't say "Il y a 10 minutes qu'on/ que l'on est là" is because of what I stated above : we use it to underline the long-term (4 years etc ...)
Here , it's been only 10 minutes ...
Oh , and last thing. Don't hurt yourself by learning by heart French useless grammar or words ... you wouldn't tell me to learn an entire dictionnary to be good at Chinese won't you?
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