Breakdown of Tu devrais éteindre le chauffage avant de dormir.
tu
you (informal singular)
dormir
to sleep
devoir
to have to / must
éteindre
to turn off
avant de
before (+ infinitive)
le chauffage
the heating
Questions & Answers about Tu devrais éteindre le chauffage avant de dormir.
Why do we use avant de + infinitive here instead of avant que?
We use avant de followed by the infinitive (dormir) because the subject doing both actions is the same (it is tu turning off the heating and tu going to sleep). If the person sleeping were someone else, you would use avant que followed by a conjugated verb.
Why is the verb devrais in the conditional here instead of the present tense?
The verb devoir means 'must' or 'to have to' in the present tense (tu dois = you must). When you want to soften it to give advice—saying 'you should' instead of 'you must'—you use the conditional form: tu devrais.
If I wanted to reverse the sentence and say 'before turning off', would it be avant de éteindre?
Almost, but you must drop the 'e' in de and add an apostrophe because éteindre starts with a vowel. It becomes avant d'éteindre.
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