Breakdown of Tu dois t'habituer à tomber sur le tapis.
tu
you (informal singular)
sur
on
devoir
to have to / must
le
him, it (masculine direct object pronoun)
Questions & Answers about Tu dois t'habituer à tomber sur le tapis.
Why do we need the word à between t'habituer and tomber?
The verb s'habituer (to get used to) requires the preposition à before a following verb. In French, many verbs need a specific preposition (à or de) to connect to an infinitive. Since you are getting used to doing something, you use s'habituer à plus the infinitive.
Why does the English translation say 'falling' (-ing form), but French uses the infinitive tomber?
In English, prepositions are usually followed by the -ing form (gerund), like 'used to falling'. In French, whenever a verb directly follows a preposition like à, de, or pour (with the only exception being en), it must be in the infinitive form (tomber).
Since habituer is an infinitive here, shouldn't it be s'habituer instead of t'habituer?
Even when a reflexive verb is in the infinitive (because it follows another verb like dois), its reflexive pronoun must still match the subject of the sentence. Since the subject is Tu, the pronoun becomes t' (te), making it Tu dois t'habituer.
Does tomber sur have a special meaning here?