Breakdown of Le marché va s'effondrer, nous aurions dû agir.
nous
we / us (object pronoun)
avoir
to have
le marché
the market
aller
to go
devoir
to have to / must
agir
to act
s'effondrer
to collapse
Questions & Answers about Le marché va s'effondrer, nous aurions dû agir.
Why does nous aurions dû agir mean "we should have acted"?
It uses the conditionnel passé (past conditional) of the verb devoir (to have to / must). To express a regret like "should have", you take the conditional form of the helping verb (aurions) and add the past participle of devoir (dû).
Why is agir in the infinitive here?
Just like in the present tense where devoir is followed by an infinitive (for example, nous devons agir), it still takes an infinitive in the past conditional. The structure is avoir (in the conditional) + dû + infinitive.
Why does the word dû have a circumflex accent?
The accent distinguishes the past participle of devoir (dû) from the masculine partitive article du (meaning "some"). Note that this accent only appears on the masculine singular form of the past participle; the feminine is simply due without the accent.
Why is there an s' before effondrer?
Could I use the simple future tense (s'effondrera) instead of va s'effondrer?
You could, but the futur proche (va s'effondrer) is much better here. It implies that the collapse is imminent and highly likely based on current evidence, which makes the regret of "we should have acted" feel much more urgent.
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