Breakdown of En tout cas, nous avons fait notre travail.
nous
we / us (object pronoun)
faire
to do, to make
notre
our (singular and plural forms: notre, nos)
le travail
the job
en tout cas
in any case
Questions & Answers about En tout cas, nous avons fait notre travail.
Is 'en tout cas' related to 'en effet' and 'd'ailleurs' from this lesson?
They are all discourse markers, but they serve different purposes. While en effet (indeed) confirms a point and d'ailleurs (moreover) adds a new one, en tout cas means 'in any case' or 'anyway.' You use it to focus on a final, undeniable fact regardless of what else was just discussed.
Can I use 'de toute façon' instead of 'en tout cas' here?
Since 'nous' means 'we', why do we use the singular 'notre' instead of 'nos'?
In French, possessive adjectives agree with the thing being owned, not the person who owns it. Even though there are multiple people ('we'), they share one collective concept of work. Because travail is singular, we use notre. If they had multiple separate jobs, it would be nos travaux.
Why does the translation say 'did' when 'avons fait' literally means 'have done'?
The French passé composé covers both the English simple past ('we did') and the present perfect ('we have done'). French uses this same tense for both, so you simply pick the translation that makes the most sense in English for the given context.
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