Breakdown of Une courte pause‑café m’aide à retrouver autant de concentration qu’au début de la journée.
Questions & Answers about Une courte pause‑café m’aide à retrouver autant de concentration qu’au début de la journée.
Because pause is grammatically feminine in French, so any article and adjective that go with it must be feminine singular:
- Feminine article: une (not un)
- Feminine adjective: courte (not court)
So:
- une courte pause‑café = a short coffee break
If the noun were masculine, you would see un court …, but pause is always feminine.
Most adjectives do come after the noun, but quite a few common ones can go before, especially when they express:
- size (grand, petit)
- length/shortness (long, court)
- age (jeune, vieux)
- beauty (beau, joli)
- goodness (bon, mauvais)
- quantity (plusieurs, quelques)
Court / courte can go before or after the noun, with a slight nuance:
- une courte pause = a short break (very neutral, common)
- une pause courte = also correct; sometimes sounds a bit more descriptive, like “a break that is short (rather than long).”
In practice, une courte pause‑café is the more idiomatic order.
Pause‑café is a fixed expression meaning coffee break (a break during which you typically drink coffee).
About the hyphen:
- You’ll see both pause‑café (with hyphen) and pause café (without) in real usage.
- With the hyphen, it’s treated more clearly as a single compound noun: a specific type of pause.
- Without the hyphen, it’s more like saying a break for coffee.
Both are understood the same way in this context; the hyphen just joins the words into one unit.
Me is an object pronoun that usually comes right before the verb in French.
When me is followed by a verb starting with a vowel or silent h, it becomes m’ (elision) to make pronunciation smoother.
- me aide → not allowed in correct French
- m’aide → correct, sounds like mèd
This is the same rule you see in:
- je aime → j’aime
- ne aime pas → n’aime pas
With verbs, aider normally follows this pattern:
aider quelqu’un à faire quelque chose
(to help someone to do something)
So you need à before the infinitive:
- m’aider à retrouver = to help me to regain / find again
The preposition de is not used after aider in this structure:
- ✗ m’aider de retrouver → incorrect
- ✓ m’aider à retrouver → correct
Trouver = to find (for the first time)
Retrouver = to find again, to get back, to regain
In this sentence, the idea is:
- I had concentration at the beginning of the day
- I lost some of it
- The coffee break helps me get that concentration back
So retrouver is better than trouver:
- retrouver la concentration = to regain concentration
- trouver la concentration would sound like discovering concentration, which is odd here.
When you compare quantities with autant, the structure is:
autant de + noun + que …
You do not put an article (la, le, les, du, de la) between de and the noun:
- autant de concentration que … = as much concentration as …
- ✗ autant la concentration que …
- ✗ autant de la concentration que …
This is the same pattern as with other quantity expressions:
- plus de concentration que … = more concentration than …
- moins de concentration que … = less concentration than …
Literally:
- autant = as much / as many
- autant de concentration que … = as much concentration as …
The general pattern is:
- autant de + noun + que …
- autant de travail que toi = as much work as you
- autant de temps qu’hier = as much time as yesterday
For comparing actions or qualities (not a noun), you use:
- autant que + subject/verb
- Je me concentre autant que toi. = I focus as much as you do.
Qu’au is a contraction of que + au:
- que (here: as … as / than)
- au = à + le (to the / at the)
So:
- autant de concentration qu’au début de la journée
- = autant de concentration que au début de la journée
- = as much concentration as at the beginning of the day
In writing, que + au must contract to qu’au (you don’t write que au).
Several points:
À + le always contracts to au:
- à le début → au début
Writing à le début is incorrect.
- à le début → au début
Journée usually takes the article la in this kind of expression:
- au début de la journée = at the beginning of the day
- Leaving out la (✗ au début de journée) sounds wrong; de normally needs an article here.
So the correct full phrase is:
- au début de la journée = at the beginning of the day
The French present tense often expresses:
- general truths
- habits
- regular effects
Here, the sentence is describing a general, repeated effect:
- A short coffee break helps me (in general) to regain as much concentration as at the beginning of the day.
So m’aide (present) is natural and corresponds to English present simple helps.
If you said:
- Une courte pause‑café m’a aidé … = A short coffee break helped me …
you’d be talking about a specific past event, not a general rule.