Breakdown of Ma cheville gauche me fait encore mal.
Questions & Answers about Ma cheville gauche me fait encore mal.
Faire mal à quelqu’un / quelque chose means to hurt or to cause pain.
So:
- Ma cheville gauche = my left ankle
- me fait mal = hurts me / is painful to me
A very literal breakdown is:
- ma cheville gauche = my left ankle
- me = to me
- fait mal = makes pain / causes pain
So the whole sentence means My left ankle still hurts or My left ankle is still hurting me.
The pronoun me means to me.
In French, faire mal is often built like this:
- X fait mal à Y = X hurts Y / X causes pain to Y
Examples:
- Cette dent me fait mal. = This tooth hurts.
- Le dos lui fait mal. = His/Her back hurts.
- Les yeux nous font mal. = Our eyes hurt.
So in Ma cheville gauche me fait encore mal, the ankle is the thing causing pain, and me shows who feels it.
Because cheville is a feminine noun in French.
- le cheville ❌
- la cheville ✅
So the possessive adjective must also be feminine singular:
- ma cheville = my ankle
Quick reminder:
- mon = my + masculine singular noun
- ma = my + feminine singular noun
- mes = my + plural noun
Examples:
- mon bras = my arm
- ma jambe = my leg
- mes épaules = my shoulders
In French, most adjectives come after the noun, and gauche is one of them here.
So:
- cheville gauche = left ankle
This is normal for words like left/right with body parts:
- la main droite = the right hand
- le pied gauche = the left foot
- l’œil droit = the right eye
English usually puts the adjective before the noun, but French often places it after.
Here, encore means still.
So:
- me fait encore mal = still hurts me
In other contexts, encore can also mean again, so learners often wonder about that. The exact meaning depends on context.
Here, because it is about an ongoing pain, still is the natural translation.
Examples:
- J’ai encore faim. = I’m still hungry.
- Il pleut encore. = It’s still raining.
- Dis-le encore. = Say it again.
Because French does not usually use être mal to say a body part hurts.
To express pain, French commonly uses structures like:
- avoir mal à... = to have pain in...
- faire mal = to hurt
So you would say:
- Ma cheville gauche me fait encore mal.
- J’ai encore mal à la cheville gauche.
But Ma cheville gauche est mal is not natural French for My left ankle hurts.
Yes, absolutely. That is a very natural alternative.
It means:
- I still have pain in my left ankle
- more naturally: My left ankle still hurts
So these two are both natural:
- Ma cheville gauche me fait encore mal.
- J’ai encore mal à la cheville gauche.
The difference is mostly one of structure:
- Ma cheville gauche me fait mal focuses on the ankle as the thing causing pain.
- J’ai mal à la cheville gauche focuses on me as the person who has pain.
Because the subject is Ma cheville gauche, which is singular.
The verb is faire, and in the present tense:
- je fais
- tu fais
- il / elle / on fait
- nous faisons
- vous faites
- ils / elles font
Since ma cheville gauche is singular, French uses fait:
- Ma cheville gauche fait mal.
If the subject were plural, it would become font:
- Mes chevilles me font mal. = My ankles hurt.
Yes. In this sentence, gauche clearly means left.
French gauche can also mean awkward or clumsy in other contexts, but with a body part like cheville, it means the left one.
So:
- la cheville gauche = the left ankle
- la main gauche = the left hand
Yes. Une cheville means an ankle.
A few nearby body-part words that learners sometimes mix up:
- la cheville = ankle
- le poignet = wrist
- le pied = foot
- la jambe = leg
So Ma cheville gauche is specifically My left ankle, not my foot or my leg.
A simple pronunciation guide is:
Ma cheville gauche me fait encore mal
≈ ma shuh-vee-yuh gohsh muh feh ahn-kor mahl
A few useful notes:
- cheville sounds roughly like shuh-vee-yuh
- gauche sounds like gohsh
- fait sounds like feh
- the final l in mal is pronounced
Depending on accent and speed, pronunciation can vary a little, but this will help you say it understandably.
Sometimes yes, but French often uses body parts differently from English.
With body parts, French very often prefers:
- a reflexive or personal construction
- plus the definite article (le / la / les)
For example:
- Je me suis cassé la jambe. = I broke my leg.
(literally: I broke the leg to myself)
But in a sentence like this one, ma cheville gauche me fait encore mal is perfectly natural because the speaker is identifying a specific body part: my left ankle.
Another very natural option is:
- J’ai encore mal à la cheville gauche.
So yes, the possessive is possible here, even though French does not always use possessives with body parts as much as English does.
In this sentence, encore is naturally placed before mal:
- Ma cheville gauche me fait encore mal.
That is the most normal wording for still hurts here.
You may sometimes see encore in slightly different positions in French, but word order can affect tone or emphasis. For a learner, the safest pattern is:
- X me fait encore mal
- J’ai encore mal à...
So for this sentence, keep encore where it is.