Il vient de boire du café et d'acheter un journal.

Questions & Answers about Il vient de boire du café et d'acheter un journal.

How does vient de boire translate to "just drank"?
In French, to say that something just happened, you use the present tense of venir (to come) + de + an infinitive verb (the unconjugated action word, like boire). Literally, il vient de boire means "he comes from to drink," but it is the standard way to say "he just drank."
Why is it et d'acheter instead of repeating et vient d'acheter?
Just like in English ("He just drank coffee and bought a newspaper"), we can drop the repeated "he just" (il vient) to sound more natural. However, in French, you must keep the de for the second verb to show it is still part of that recent past structure.
Why is there an apostrophe in d'acheter?
When the word de is followed by a word starting with a vowel (like acheter), the "e" is dropped and replaced with an apostrophe to make pronunciation smoother. So, de acheter becomes d'acheter.
Why use du café and not just café?
In English we can simply say "drank coffee," but French almost always requires a small article before a noun. Because coffee is an uncountable noun (you are drinking an undefined amount of it, not the entire concept of coffee), you must use the partitive article du (meaning "some").

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