Breakdown of Je travaille principalement seul, mais mentalement je me sens entouré par mes amis.
Questions & Answers about Je travaille principalement seul, mais mentalement je me sens entouré par mes amis.
Seul / seule must agree in gender and number with the subject je (the person speaking).
- If the speaker is a man: Je travaille principalement seul is correct.
- If the speaker is a woman: it should be Je travaille principalement seule.
The sentence as written assumes a male speaker. For a female speaker, both seul and entouré would change:
- Je travaille principalement seule, mais mentalement je me sens entourée par mes amis.
French distinguishes between:
- sentir = to smell / to feel (sense something external)
- Je sens une odeur de café. = I smell coffee.
- se sentir = to feel (a certain way, internally)
- Je me sens fatigué. = I feel tired.
In je me sens entouré, the speaker is describing how they feel (their inner state), so the reflexive form se sentir is used:
- je (subject)
- me (reflexive pronoun)
- sens (verb, 1st person singular)
So je me sens literally means “I feel myself [to be] …”, which is how French expresses “I feel + adjective/participle”.
Both entouré par and entouré de are possible with entourer:
- entouré par emphasizes the agent (who is doing the surrounding), often a bit more concrete or physical:
- entouré par mes amis = surrounded by my friends (they are the ones doing the surrounding)
- entouré de emphasizes the state of being surrounded as a kind of “environment”:
- entouré de mes amis = in a situation where I’m surrounded with my friends all around me
In everyday speech:
- entouré de is very common and often sounds a bit more natural for “surrounded by people/things” as a state.
- entouré par can sound slightly more literal or physical, but it’s still correct.
So you could very naturally say:
- Je me sens entouré de mes amis.
The past participle/adjective entouré agrees with the person who feels surrounded, not with the people doing the surrounding.
Subject: je
State: je suis / je me sens entouré
So it agrees with je (the speaker), not with mes amis.
- Male speaker: je me sens entouré
- Female speaker: je me sens entourée
- More than one person speaking: nous nous sentons entourés / entourées
Mes amis does not control the agreement here; it’s simply who is surrounding the speaker.
In French, most adverbs of manner, quantity, or frequency tend to come after the conjugated verb:
- Je travaille principalement seul. = I mainly work alone.
Here’s the logic:
- travaille = the action
- principalement = modifies how/under what proportion he works
- seul = describes the subject’s condition while working
You can move principalement, but some positions are more natural than others:
✅ Natural:
- Je travaille principalement seul.
- Je travaille surtout seul. (using surtout instead of principalement)
🔸 Possible but more marked/emphatic:
- Principalement, je travaille seul. (stylistic, emphasizes “mainly”)
❌ Not natural:
- Je principalement travaille seul. (wrong in standard French)
So the given word order is the most standard.
Adverbs like mentalement (mentally) usually go:
- Right after the conjunction, at the start of the clause:
- … mais mentalement je me sens entouré…
- Or right after the verb:
- … mais je me sens mentalement entouré…
Both are grammatically correct, but there’s a nuance:
- mais mentalement je me sens…
- Emphasizes the mental contrast with the previous clause.
- mais je me sens mentalement entouré…
- Sounds a bit more neutral; the focus is more on the overall feeling.
Putting mentalement at the very end, like:
- … je me sens entouré par mes amis mentalement.
is unusual and could be confusing (it might sound like it’s the friends who are “mental”).
In French, it’s very common (and usually recommended) to put a comma before mais when it introduces a contrast between two clauses:
- Je travaille principalement seul, mais mentalement je me sens entouré…
The comma:
- Marks a pause.
- Shows the contrast between working alone and feeling surrounded.
In informal writing, some people might omit it, but with the comma is the standard and clearer form.
Yes, you can. Both are adverbs, but their nuance is a bit different:
- principalement = mainly, for the most part; it’s neutral and factual.
- surtout = especially, above all; slightly more emphatic.
So:
- Je travaille principalement seul.
- Neutral: most of my work is done alone.
- Je travaille surtout seul.
- Suggests “above all, I work alone” — sounds a bit more like you’re highlighting or complaining about that fact.
Both are correct; it’s a matter of style and nuance.
In French, the possessive is usually explicitly stated when you mean “my friends”:
- mes amis = my friends
- les amis = the friends (some specific group already known from context)
- des amis = (some) friends
In English, you can sometimes say “I feel surrounded by friends” without my, but in French that would be:
- Je me sens entouré d’amis.
That means friends in general, not specifically my personal friends.
In the original sentence, the idea is clearly personal, so mes amis is the most natural translation of “my friends”.
Yes, you can say:
- Je travaille principalement tout seul.
Seul and tout seul are both correct but feel slightly different:
- seul = alone; neutral, factual.
- tout seul = all by myself / completely alone; often more emphatic and a bit more informal.
Nuance:
- Je travaille principalement seul.
- Neutral: I mainly work alone (just describes the situation).
- Je travaille principalement tout seul.
- Emphasizes that you really are by yourself, without help.
In writing that’s a bit more formal or neutral, seul is more common.
The present tense je travaille here is the présent de l’indicatif, which in French is used for:
- General habits or states:
- Je travaille principalement seul. = I generally/usually work alone.
- Situations that are true at the moment and over a period of time.
This corresponds to both English “I work” and “I am working”, depending on context.
You could theoretically change the tense to change the time frame:
- Je travaillais principalement seul… = I used to work mainly alone…
- Je travaillerai principalement seul… = I will mainly work alone…
But for a general statement about how you work now, the French present tense is exactly what you want.
You could say it, and it’s grammatically correct, but the nuance changes:
- je me sens entouré = I feel surrounded (subjective, emotional state)
- je suis entouré = I am surrounded (objective description of a fact/situation)
In this sentence, the speaker talks about an internal, psychological state:
- mentalement je me sens entouré par mes amis
- Expresses an inner feeling of support and presence.
If you say:
- mentalement je suis entouré par mes amis
it sounds more like a logical statement (“mentally, I am surrounded…”) and less like a personal feeling. Se sentir is the most natural choice for emotions and subjective experiences.
You’d have to adjust the agreements for gender:
- Speaker = female → seule, entourée
- Friends = all female → amies
So the sentence becomes:
- Je travaille principalement seule, mais mentalement je me sens entourée par mes amies.
Changes:
- seul → seule (agrees with je, a woman)
- entouré → entourée (agrees with je, a woman)
- amis → amies (all friends are female)