Word
Tu devrais bien te comporter au restaurant.
Meaning
You should behave well at the restaurant.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Tu devrais bien te comporter au restaurant.
tu
you (informal singular)
le restaurant
the restaurant
bien
well
au
to the / at the (masculine singular)
Questions & Answers about Tu devrais bien te comporter au restaurant.
Why do we use devrais here instead of dois?
devrais is the conditional form of the verb devoir (must). While Tu dois means 'You must', using the conditional Tu devrais softens the meaning to 'You should'. This makes it the standard way to give advice in French.
Why is there a te in front of comporter?
The French verb for 'to behave' is reflexive: se comporter. Even though the verb stays in its infinitive (unconjugated) form after devrais, the reflexive pronoun se still must change to te to match the subject Tu.
Why is bien placed right after devrais instead of at the end of the sentence?
In French, short adverbs like bien (well) and mal (badly) usually go right after the conjugated verb. Since devrais is the conjugated verb here, bien is placed between it and the infinitive phrase te comporter.