Breakdown of Cette fatigue est normale, explique le médecin, et elle doit simplement avoir de la patience.
Questions & Answers about Cette fatigue est normale, explique le médecin, et elle doit simplement avoir de la patience.
In French, demonstrative adjectives must agree in gender and number with the noun:
- ce – masculine singular (e.g. ce problème)
- cette – feminine singular (e.g. cette fatigue)
- ces – plural (both genders)
The noun fatigue is feminine in French (la fatigue), so you have to use the feminine form cette.
Ça fatigue would mean something different: ça here is a subject pronoun ("that tires [you / me / people]"), not “this fatigue.”
Adjectives in French agree in gender and number with the noun they describe.
- fatigue is feminine singular → la fatigue
- The adjective normal must therefore be put in the feminine singular form: normale.
So:
- un état normal (masc. sing.)
- une fatigue normale (fem. sing.)
- des symptômes normaux (masc. pl.)
- des réactions normales (fem. pl.)
Grammatically, elle is just “she,” but the referent is decided by context.
- It cannot logically refer to la fatigue, because fatigue can’t “have patience.”
- In a realistic medical context, elle refers to the female patient the doctor is talking about.
So the idea is: “This tiredness is normal, the doctor explains, and she just has to be patient.”
A native speaker gets this from the meaning of the situation, not from a special grammatical marker.
Yes, verb–subject inversion is used in questions:
- Le médecin explique… → statement
- Le médecin explique-t-il… ? → question
But explique le médecin here is not a question. It’s what French grammars call an incise (a reporting clause like “the doctor explains,” “he says,” “she adds”) inserted into another sentence, often with commas:
- « C’est normal », explique le médecin.
- Cette fatigue est normale, explique le médecin.
In these reporting clauses, the usual written style is:
- verb + subject → explique le médecin, dit-elle, ajoute le professeur, etc.
So here inversion doesn’t show a question; it’s simply the conventional word order for a short reporting clause.
French often uses the present tense as a “narrative present” or “present of narration” when telling a story or reporting what someone says, even if the overall context is in the past.
- Cette fatigue est normale, explique le médecin…
→ stylistic, livelier, like you are hearing the doctor right now. - Cette fatigue était normale, a expliqué le médecin…
→ normal past reporting.
Both are correct; the present makes the scene feel more immediate and vivid. In journalism and storytelling, this present is very common.
In French, patience usually needs a partitive article when you use it in this meaning:
- avoir de la patience = to have (some) patience
You normally can’t just say avoir patience in standard French. The de la is required.
Compare:
- avoir du courage – to be brave / have courage
- avoir de l’énergie – to have energy
- avoir de la chance – to be lucky
English often drops the article (“have patience, have courage”), but French normally keeps it.
Both are possible, but they’re not exactly the same:
- avoir de la patience → focuses on possessing/manifesting patience as a quality or resource.
- “She must have patience / must be patient (show patience).”
- être patiente → directly describes her character/attitude as “patient.”
In many contexts they’re interchangeable:
- Elle doit simplement avoir de la patience.
- Elle doit simplement être patiente.
The version with avoir de la patience sounds very natural in advice or instructions from a doctor: “You just need to have some patience; the symptoms will pass.”
Simplement is an adverb meaning “simply,” “just,” “only (in the sense of ‘no more than’)”.
It modifies the whole idea doit avoir de la patience:
- elle doit simplement avoir de la patience
≈ “she just has to be patient / she simply needs to be patient.”
Placement: with one conjugated verb followed by an infinitive, French usually puts common adverbs after the conjugated verb and before the infinitive:
- elle doit simplement attendre
- il peut déjà venir
- nous voulons vraiment comprendre
So doit simplement avoir is the standard position:
[doit] [simplement] [avoir].
Yes. The commas mark the reporting clause explique le médecin as something inserted into the main message:
- Main statement: Cette fatigue est normale … et elle doit simplement avoir de la patience.
- Inserted reporting clause: explique le médecin
So you get:
- Cette fatigue est normale, explique le médecin, et elle doit simplement avoir de la patience.
French uses commas to “cut out” that clause so that it’s clearly separate from the content of what’s being said. It’s similar to:
- “This tiredness is normal, the doctor explains, and she just has to be patient.”
Yes, several more “neutral” versions are possible. For example:
Le médecin explique que cette fatigue est normale et qu’elle doit simplement avoir de la patience.
- Classic indirect speech with que.
« Cette fatigue est normale et vous devez simplement avoir de la patience », explique le médecin.
- Direct quotation with quotation marks (or dashes).
Le médecin lui explique que sa fatigue est normale et qu’elle doit simplement faire preuve de patience.
- Uses faire preuve de patience (“show patience”) as a more formal alternative.
The original form just integrates the doctor’s explanation into the narration in a more literary style.