Breakdown of Pour rester en bonne santé, Paul essaie de manger plus sain et de faire du sport.
Questions & Answers about Pour rester en bonne santé, Paul essaie de manger plus sain et de faire du sport.
In French, when you express a purpose with an infinitive, you normally use pour + infinitive.
- Pour rester en bonne santé… = In order to stay healthy…
- Just Rester en bonne santé, Paul essaie… sounds wrong/unnatural in French; it’s missing the link of purpose.
So pour is needed to show why Paul does the actions that follow.
Both are grammatically correct, but the nuance changes slightly:
- Pour être en bonne santé = To be healthy (focus on reaching or having that state).
- Pour rester en bonne santé = To stay / remain healthy (focus on maintaining health over time).
In this context—talking about good habits—rester is more natural, because Paul is trying to keep his good health.
- en bonne santé is the standard, everyday way to say “healthy (for a person)” in France:
- Il est en bonne santé. = He is healthy.
- en santé exists but is mainly used in Canadian French; in France it sounds unusual or very formal/technical.
- sain / saine is usually used for things, not people:
- une alimentation saine = a healthy diet
- un environnement sain = a healthy environment
So for “to stay healthy (as a person)”, rester en bonne santé is the natural choice in European French.
In French, en is often used to express a state or condition someone is in:
- en forme = in shape
- en retard = late
- en colère = angry
- en bonne santé = in good health
Using à or de here would be incorrect. This is just an idiomatic pattern you have to memorize: être / rester en bonne santé.
Because the verb essayer (to try) is followed by de + infinitive:
- essayer de faire quelque chose = to try to do something
Examples:
- J’essaie de comprendre. = I’m trying to understand.
- Nous essayons de partir tôt. = We’re trying to leave early.
So you must say Paul essaie de manger…, not Paul essaie manger… and not essaie à manger….
They are two accepted spellings of the same form:
- il / elle / on essaie or il / elle / on essaye
- j’essaie / j’essaye, tu essaies / essayes, etc.
There is no difference in meaning or pronunciation.
In modern French, essaie (with one y) is a bit more common in writing, but essaye is also correct.
You can repeat de, and it’s very natural here:
- Paul essaie de manger plus sain et de faire du sport.
Technically, French also allows you to say:
- Paul essaie de manger plus sain et faire du sport.
But:
- Repeating de keeps the structure clearer, especially when each verb has its own complement (plus sain vs du sport).
- Many speakers find de manger… et de faire… more elegant and more obviously correct, especially in writing.
So repeating de is recommended in this kind of sentence.
The “textbook” adverb from sain is sainement:
- manger sainement = to eat healthily
However, in everyday French, people very often use the adjective sain as if it were an adverb:
- manger sain / manger plus sain = to eat healthy / to eat more healthy
So:
- manger plus sain and manger plus sainement both mean “eat more healthily”.
- sainement is more “correct” from a grammar-book point of view.
- plus sain is more colloquial and very common in spoken French.
In manger plus sain, sain is used in a special way: an adjective used as an adverb to describe how Paul eats, not what is healthy.
- It doesn’t agree with anything; it stays invariable here.
- You don’t say manger plus saine or manger plus sains in this structure.
If sain really were an ordinary adjective agreeing with a noun, you would see that noun:
- une alimentation plus saine = a healthier diet
(here saine agrees with alimentation, which is feminine)
French often omits the noun when it’s obvious from context.
Manger plus sain literally means “to eat more healthy(ly)”, with an implied noun such as:
- de la nourriture plus saine (healthier food)
- une alimentation plus saine (a healthier diet)
So the idea is: Paul tries to have a healthier diet / eat healthier food, but French doesn’t need to say nourriture or alimentation explicitly here.
Faire du sport is the idiomatic, general way to say “to do sport / to exercise”:
- du = de + le, a partitive article, often translated as “some”.
- faire du sport = to do some sport, to do exercise in general.
Other options are different:
- faire le sport is wrong in this sense.
- faire des sports sounds odd; you usually specify the sport:
- faire du football, faire du tennis, etc.
So for “to do exercise” in a general way, you say faire du sport.
Yes, and the nuance changes slightly:
- faire du sport = do (some) sport / exercise in general.
- faire plus de sport = do more sport / more exercise (than before).
In your original sentence, the focus is on the habit of doing exercise at all, so faire du sport is perfectly natural.
If you wanted to emphasize increasing the amount of exercise, you could say:
- Paul essaie de manger plus sain et de faire plus de sport.
= Paul is trying to eat healthier and do more exercise.
Yes. Both of these are correct:
- Pour rester en bonne santé, Paul essaie de manger plus sain et de faire du sport.
- Paul essaie de manger plus sain et de faire du sport pour rester en bonne santé.
Placing pour rester en bonne santé at the beginning simply emphasizes the purpose more strongly, similar to English:
“To stay healthy, Paul…” vs “Paul… to stay healthy.”
In plus sain, you normally do pronounce the final s of plus, with a liaison:
- plus sain → /ply sɛ̃/ (roughly: plü-sen)
General rule:
- Before a vowel sound (like the s in sain, which starts with a vowel sound /ɛ̃/), you make a liaison and say the s: plu-sain.
- When plus means “no more / no longer” in a negative (ne… plus), in modern speech the final s is usually silent:
- Je ne fume plus. → /ʒə nə fym ply/ (no s sound)
Here, plus means “more”, so you pronounce the s.