Breakdown of Quand je suis sans travail, le chômage me fait très peur.
Questions & Answers about Quand je suis sans travail, le chômage me fait très peur.
Both are grammatically correct, but they differ slightly in nuance:
Quand je suis sans travail literally: when I am without work.
- Feels a bit more like a state or situation you’re in (a period in your life).
- Slightly more formal / neutral.
Quand je n’ai pas de travail literally: when I don’t have work.
- Focuses more on the absence/possession of work at that moment.
- Sounds a bit more everyday and concrete (e.g. I don’t have any work to do right now).
In many contexts they’re interchangeable, but sans travail leans toward “unemployed / without a job” as a general state, not just “I have no tasks today.”
Yes, you could say both, and they’re common:
Quand je suis au chômage
- Literally: when I’m unemployed (registered as unemployed).
- Often implies the official status of being unemployed (and possibly receiving benefits).
Quand je suis sans emploi
- Literally: when I’m without a job.
- Neutral, slightly formal; very close to “unemployed” as a state.
Quand je suis sans travail
- Literally: when I am without work.
- Can mean unemployed, but it’s a bit broader and can emphasize simply not having work.
All three can work, with small nuance differences. For a clear “I’m unemployed,” au chômage or sans emploi is more standard.
French uses:
Quand + future when you’re clearly talking about a specific future time:
- Quand je serai sans travail, je chercherai un nouveau job.
When I’m (will be) without work, I’ll look for a new job.
- Quand je serai sans travail, je chercherai un nouveau job.
Quand + present when you’re talking about:
- General truths
- Habitual or repeated situations
Here, Quand je suis sans travail, le chômage me fait très peur describes something that is generally true every time you’re without work. It’s a habitual situation, not one single future event, so the present is normal and correct.
If the speaker meant one specific future period without work, they would say Quand je serai sans travail…
Le chômage can mean both in French, depending on context:
The state of being unemployed / unemployment (as a phenomenon)
- Le chômage augmente. – Unemployment is rising.
- In your sentence, this is the meaning: the idea or fact of unemployment is scary.
Unemployment benefits (colloquial, especially in toucher le chômage = get unemployment)
- Il touche le chômage. – He’s getting unemployment benefits.
In Le chômage me fait très peur, it clearly means unemployment as a situation or social reality, not the benefits.
You need the definite article le here:
- In French, abstract nouns (like unemployment, love, freedom) usually take a definite article when used in a general sense:
- Le chômage – unemployment
- L’amour – love
- La liberté – freedom
So you say:
- Le chômage me fait très peur. – Unemployment scares me a lot.
Without the article (∗Chômage me fait très peur) sounds ungrammatical. The article is obligatory in standard French in this kind of general statement.
The key structure is:
- faire peur à quelqu’un – to scare someone / to make someone afraid
Grammar breakdown:
- le chômage = subject (what causes the fear)
- me = indirect object pronoun (to me)
- fait = verb (3rd person singular of faire)
- très peur = a lot of fear / very afraid
Word order in French with object pronouns:
- Pronoun goes before the conjugated verb:
- Le chômage me fait très peur. – Unemployment really scares me.
Fait moi très peur is not correct in normal French word order. Moi (the stressed pronoun) can appear for emphasis:
- Le chômage, à moi, me fait très peur. (emphatic, a bit heavy)
But the normal, neutral form is me fait peur, with me before the verb.
They’re very close in meaning and both are natural:
Le chômage me fait très peur.
- Literally: Unemployment makes me very afraid.
- Puts chômage as the subject, emphasizing it as the active cause of fear.
J’ai très peur du chômage.
- Literally: I am very afraid of unemployment.
- Puts je as the subject, focusing more on your feeling toward chômage.
Nuance is small. Both would usually be understood in exactly the same way in conversation. You can choose either.
With peur (fear), French normally uses très (very) or beaucoup de (a lot of) depending on the structure:
- avoir très peur – to be very afraid
- avoir beaucoup de peur – technically possible but rare and unnatural in everyday speech.
In practice:
- You say: J’ai très peur. – I’m very afraid.
- You don’t say: ∗J’ai beaucoup peur. (sounds wrong to native speakers)
In your sentence, we have faire très peur:
- Le chômage me fait très peur. – Unemployment really scares me.
So très peur is idiomatic and correct. Beaucoup peur sounds wrong.
The natural way is:
- Le chômage me fait très peur.
You can grammatically say:
- Le chômage fait très peur à moi.
but it’s:
- Very unusual and emphatic, and
- Feels almost wrong in normal speech.
In standard French, indirect object pronouns (me, te, lui, nous, vous, leur) go before the verb:
- Le chômage me fait peur.
- Le chômage lui fait peur.
- Le chômage leur fait peur.
You only use à moi / à lui / à eux for contrast or emphasis:
- Le chômage lui fait peur, mais pas à moi. – Unemployment scares him, but not me.
Yes, you can say:
- Lorsque je suis sans travail, le chômage me fait très peur.
Differences:
quand
- Very common in spoken and written French.
- Neutral, everyday.
lorsque
- A bit more formal or literary.
- Used more in writing, news, formal speech.
In meaning, here they’re essentially the same. It’s mostly a register/style difference.
In this kind of temporal clause with quand, you normally use the indicative, not the subjunctive:
- Quand je suis sans travail… – present indicative
- Quand je serai sans travail… – future indicative, for a specific future time
Two important points:
- Quand + subjunctive (∗quand je sois) is essentially not used in modern standard French.
- Quand je serais sans travail (conditional) would only appear in very specific, hypothetical / reported contexts and is not the normal pattern for this meaning.
For a general statement (“whenever I am without work”), the correct and natural form is:
- Quand je suis sans travail, le chômage me fait très peur.