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Do you want me?

Whilst spending a year abroad, I fell in love with a rather handsome French man. My French made great progress, but I still made a number of mistakes. One of the most memorable was during a heated discussion with J-C, where we had fallen out for some reason. He turned and asked me: Tu m'en veux alors ? I understood this as 'Do you want me', so I replied with a flourish: Bien sûr, je t'en veux !, thinking I was confirming his question. I could not understand why this seemed to make matters worse ... It was only much later in the day that I found out that the little addition of the pronoun en in this construction turned the meaning of the verb vouloir, to want, into s'en vouloir, to blame oneself! I had said to him 'Of course I blame you!' Oops! I should have said: Bien sûr, je te veux !

Sent by: Andy H

Comments

Scarlet, Belfast 2009-10-16

EN is a pronoun and so replaces something that has not always been clarified.
"J'en veux" means "I want some".
"Je te veux" means "I want you".
"Je t'en veux" could literally mean "I want something to do with you", as in to pick a bone. I have something to sort out. I resent you, is one of the translations.

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Ellen Coxon 2008-07-03

This en word can really change the meaning ...

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edina 2008-04-23

I was telling a story to two Irish men, when one of them said: you are so looky. Looky? I started thinking wondering what he meant: my looks, do I look good? They both stared at me, I was staring at them, when I hit my forehead: Ah, you mean lucky?

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Faith 2008-04-25

It is really good story,I like it but I want you to know that we all are making mistakes. I do the same thing nowadays because I'm learning German.

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