Breakdown of Quel soulagement, tu aurais pu tout paralyser !
tu
you (informal singular)
avoir
to have
quel
which / what (adjective)
pouvoir
to be able to / can
tout
all, everything
le soulagement
the relief
paralyser
to paralyze
Questions & Answers about Quel soulagement, tu aurais pu tout paralyser !
The lesson is about using faillir for near misses. Why does this sentence use aurais pu instead?
While faillir means you almost did something, tu aurais pu is the past conditional of pouvoir and means you could have done it. They are closely related in meaning when talking about narrowly avoided disasters! To use this lesson's specific structure, you would say tu as failli tout paralyser (you almost paralyzed everything).
Why is there no article like un after Quel for "What a relief"?
Why is tout placed before the verb instead of at the end of the sentence?
When tout acts as the direct object of an infinitive verb, it must be placed directly before that infinitive. So instead of saying paralyser tout, the correct grammatical order is tout paralyser.
How exactly is aurais pu formed here?
It is the past conditional of pouvoir. You form it by taking the present conditional of the helping verb avoir, which is tu aurais, and adding the past participle of pouvoir, which is pu. This creates the meaning "you could have" or literally "you would have been able to".
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