Word
Lavez-vous le dos avec du savon doux et allez au sauna.
Meaning
Wash your back with some gentle soap and go to the sauna.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Lavez-vous le dos avec du savon doux et allez au sauna.
et
and
avec
with
au
to the / at the (masculine singular)
aller
to go
Questions & Answers about Lavez-vous le dos avec du savon doux et allez au sauna.
Why is the pronoun vous attached to the end of Lavez-vous with a hyphen?
This is the affirmative imperative (giving a positive command). When telling someone to do something with a reflexive verb like se laver (to wash oneself), the pronoun moves after the verb and is connected with a hyphen. Instead of the regular statement Vous vous lavez (You wash yourself), the command becomes Lavez-vous (Wash yourself).
The translation says "your back", but the French says le dos (the back). Why not votre dos?
In French, when referring to body parts, you almost always use the definite article (le, la, les) instead of possessive words like votre (your) or mon (my). The reflexive pronoun vous in Lavez-vous already makes it perfectly clear whose back is being washed!
Why use du savon instead of just savon?
In French, nouns almost always need an article in front of them. Because soap is an uncountable substance here (meaning "some soap"), we use the partitive article du, which is a mandatory contraction of de + le.
Why isn't there a pronoun after allez like there is for Lavez-vous?