Language/French/Grammar/il-or-ça-alternating-with-noun-phrase-subjects

il or ça alternating with noun phrase subjects

A handful of common verbs alternate between an impersonal construction with il (or ça in informal spoken French) and a personal construction with a noun phrase subject:

• Il semble que Pierre soit passé lundi or Pierre semble être passé lundi

It seems that Pierre came round on Monday

• Il apparaît que vous êtes le dindon de la farce or Vous apparaissez comme étant le dindon de la farce

It seems that you have been made a fool of

• Il s'est avéré que Sophie était consciencieuse or Sophie s'est avérée consciencieuse

It turned out that Sophie was conscientious

After mastering this lesson, these related pages might interest you: Possessive determiners, Omission of the article, Location of adverbs modifying adjectives, prepositions, noun phrases and other adverbs & Adverbs ending in —ément derived from adjectives ending in —e.

Other Lessons

• How to use « il s'agit de » in French
• Fused forms of the definite article
• Verb agreement with fractions
• Plural forms of adjectives — The normal case
• Non agreement of direct object numerals with coûter, peser and mesurer
• Masculine and feminine forms of adjectives — No change in written or spoken French
• Adjective—adjective compounds
• Reflexive and reciprocal verbs
• Agreement with a preceding direct object in a relative clause when the participle is followed by an infinitive
• The plural indefinite article des
• Gender of Nouns Names of ships and restaurants
• Pronouns referring to groups of mixed gender
• "C'est" or "Ce sont"
• Ditransitive verbs
• Conjugation group 3 — verbs with infinitives which end in —re