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