Learn French: Vous punissez injustement les marins avides et vous les attachez au mât. - You are unfairly punishing the greedy sailors and tying them to the mast.

Word

Vous punissez injustement les marins avides et vous les attachez au mât.

Meaning

You are unfairly punishing the greedy sailors and tying them to the mast.

Part of speech

sentence

Pronunciation

Course

French

Lesson

Partitive pronouns (d'entre nous)

Breakdown of Vous punissez injustement les marins avides et vous les attachez au mât.

and

vous

you (plural/formal)

at / to / in (general locations) / about (what one thinks about / reacts to)

les

them (direct object pronoun)

Questions & Answers about Vous punissez injustement les marins avides et vous les attachez au mât.

Since this lesson is about d'entre, how could we change the sentence to say 'and you tie some of them to the mast'?

Instead of the direct object pronoun les (vous les attachez - you tie them), you would use an indefinite pronoun like certains (some) followed by the stressed pronoun construction d'entre eux (of them). The phrase becomes ...et vous attachez certains d'entre eux au mât. Notice how certains d'entre eux goes after the verb, unlike the simple pronoun les.

Why does injustement come right after punissez?

In French, adverbs that modify a conjugated verb typically follow that verb directly. Unlike in English where we can say 'unfairly punishing' (adverb before the verb), French requires the adverb to come after the verb, making it vous punissez injustement.

Could the adjective avides go before marins?

Avide (greedy or eager) is a descriptive adjective that categorizes the noun, so it follows the standard French rule of coming after the noun (les marins avides). It would only precede the noun in highly poetic contexts to emphasize the emotion, but in standard everyday usage, it belongs after.

Why do we use au mât (to the mast) instead of sur le mât (on the mast)?