| Hey, everyone. Welcome back for more French. It's Pierre from France and today's lesson will be about three words; déjà, encore, toujours, three adverbs that are often difficult to translate into English when you don't know the rules. So without further ado, let's get started. I forgot the accent here. So three categories; déjà, encore and toujours. |
| Déjà is something that you can translate in two different ways, even three. The first meaning of déjà in French is the meaning of “already / yet”. It would depend if it's a question or if it's positive affirmation. So here, this is the first case and the second case is when you translate it with ever or already. So here, you've got two different meanings and it will depend if it's a question and if it's positive or if it's negative. This is typical with déjà and this is the case for the two different meanings. |
| So let's start with the first one, déjà as something that means “already / yet”. So when you say |
| es-tu déjà arrivé en France, it means like did you arrive yet? So I don't know why I put en France but like - Es-tu déjà arrivé? “Did you arrive yet?” Es-tu déjà arrivé? “Did you arrive yet?” So here déjà, it’s “yet”. When you add the question in English and you use yet in the question, you have to translate it as déjà, “Did you arrive yet?” Es-tu déjà arrivé? But if you want to answer this question, in English you can say, if like yeah, you did arrive, you have to say, I have already arrived so you use already, that's why you put already here. But if you didn't arrive yet, you use and I just said, yet. But in English, it's a bit different than in French because here in French, you have to use déjà for the positive one so in English, you change, you use yet arrive and in French, it’s the same. But in English, you use yet like in the questions, but in French, you have to use something different. You have to use one of those two; encore or toujours, but with the negative form - Je ne suis pas encore arrivé? Liaison. Je ne suis toujours pas arrivé? So it means like “I have not arrived yet.”. This is the same meaning; encore and toujours pas, it’s almost the same meaning. So be careful with that. The opposite of déjà in French is pas encore or toujours pas. I will explain later the real difference between encore and toujours, but for now, just remember that one of the opposite of déjà in the case when you use déjà as “yet / already”, the opposite is pas encore or toujours pas so be careful with that. So this was the first meaning of déjà like “already / yet”. |
| But there is another meaning which is “ever / already”. Again, you can see already. So when you ask in English, “Have you ever been to France?”, you can say, “Yeah! I have already been to France.” or “No. I have never been to France.” So let's get started with the question and the negative one. As you can see in English, to show that it's negative, you add the “n” at ever, have you ever been to France? I have never been to France. But in French, we don't have the word for ever. We just say déjà - Es-tu déjà allé en France? For never, it’s easy to translate, you just use jamais. It’s like “never”. It’s always jamais in French. |
| So here, you ask the question - Es-tu déjà allé en France? I forgot the verb here. Es-tu déjà allé en France? “Have you ever been to France?” So déjà “ever” as a question. But if you want to answer like the positive way like you want to say yes, I have already been to France, you have to use again the same one - Je suis déjà allé en France? But the negative form would be jamais. So here, we’ve seen that déjà like when you use a question like a positive sentence, you use déjà. But the opposite form of déjà, the negative form would be different depending on the meaning of the déjà. So if it's the meaning of “already / yet”, it's pas encore or toujours pas, but if it’s the meaning of “ever / already”, the negative form is jamais. So please be careful. The negative form depends on the real meaning. In French, you cannot put the negative form of déjà with just pas. You have to choose between one of these two or this one, jamais, or pas encore. So déjà, again, two meanings, and depending on the meanings, different negative forms. So this is all for déjà, but that's déjà suffisant “it’s enough” right? So déjà suffisant “it’s already enough”. |
| Next one, encore. Encore, like many meanings, three meanings. Encore, one of the meanings is “again”. So when you say il est encore en retard, it means like “Oh, he is late again.”. So here, encore “again”. So this is the positive form and the negative form is like in English you just put, “He is not late again.”. You just put the negation and in French, it’s the same, il n’est pas encore en retard, but be careful because here, when you see the sentence il n’est pas encore en retard, it’s not the same pas encore, je ne suis pas encore arrivé? So be careful with this. This sentence, when you see il n’est pas encore en retard, you have two meanings; this meaning or this meaning so be careful. With just this sentence, you cannot guess the meaning, but with the context, you can guess the meaning. So be careful because this pas encore can be the opposite form of encore, but also the opposite form of déjà so be careful with this. Il est encore en retard. “He is late again.” Usually, you don't use this form a lot, but it exists so be careful. Usually, when you see encore, it's mainly this meaning so just to let you know. Usually, the more common sentence with encore like the positive form is this one. This one, not a lot like in English, “He is not late again.”. You don't use that a lot but you can say it. So here, encore en retard “He is late again.”. This is a kind of an easy meaning right? |
| Let's move on to the next, encore, when it means “another / more” like if you want more coffee - Je veux encore du café. “I want more coffee.” I didn't put the English translation here because they have no space but - Je veux encore du café. “I want more coffee.” Je veux encore du café. Here, “more” is encore. |
| But here, there is another way to translate encore. Here when you say - Je veux encore une tasse de café, you use another, “I want another cup of coffee.”. So here, encore, is “another / more”. What is the difference between this? It's because in English, you have countable and uncountable objects. Like a cup of tea, you cannot count it. You can count it, but coffee, you cannot count it. So in English, it's more when you can count the object and when you can't count the object, it’s another. But luckily in French for once, we have something that is easier than in English. Now here, it's like just encore for the two situations so you don't bother. “Another / more” is encore, no matter if you can count or not the object. Je veux encore du café. Je veux encore une tasse de café. |
| But what is the negative form of that? This is, like in English, not anymore like I want more coffee or I don’t want coffee anymore like more - anymore. In French, it's like you use a completely different adverb, it’s plus, je ne veux plus. Plus is always coupled with ne like it's one of the negations. Usually the negation is ne pas in French, ne pas, je ne veux pas travailler, ne pas. |
| But there is also other negations like with jamais or with plus. So plus, it means “not anymore” so if you want to translate not anymore, not is “ne” and plus “anymore”. Je ne veux plus de café. I want more coffee. I don’t want… I want more coffee. I don’t want coffee anymore. Je veux encore du café. Je ne veux plus de café. |
| So what about the case where like you say, I don't want another cup of coffee? In French, you have to say je ne veux plus d'une tasse de café, but the meaning is a bit different if you say je ne veux plus d'une tasse de café. It means that you change your mind, je ne veux plus d'une tasse de café. So here, there is this distinction between countable and uncountable objects. So just remember this one, je veux encore du café. If you cannot count the object like I want more, you say I don't want anymore. I want more, I don't know anymore. So this is only the negative form. This meaning is only for objects that you cannot count. But for an object that you can count like the meaning if you use je ne veux plus, d'une tasse de café, you have to put “d”, je ne veux plus d'une tasse de café. It means like you want it, but now you don't want it anymore. So this is kind of subtle. Be careful with that, but remember, je veux encore for countable object. For uncountable objects, the negative form is plus like in English; “more, not anymore” “encore / ne plus. |
| So this was one of the meanings and another meaning is encore plus or encore moins. It means “even more” or “even less”. So if you want to say it's even more interesting, you say - C'est encore plus intéressant. “It's even more interesting.” |
| If you want to use the opposite form like this is the positive one, you can use also the negative one. So if you want to say “It's even less expensive” c'est encore moins cher, encore moins cher. Encore here is “even” and plus is “more” and moins is “less”.C'est encore plus is “even more”, c'est encore moins is “even less”. So this one is kind of easy, no tricks with this one like encore is just “even”. Those two ones, no tricks like encore “again” or encore “even”. Here, there is this nuance just one word for two words in English. |
| So here is for encore and as you can see, there is also this situation where, when you use the negative form of encore, sometimes it's this one, but usually, it's more this meaning like the opposite form of déjà so it’s like not yet. |
| So here, you see that encore, encore, encore, but pas encore which is the negative form like not like pas encore, one of the translation is “not yet”. So I'm going to add it. Pas encore, it means “sometimes” and in most cases, it means “not yet”. So this is one of the other meaning of encore, but sometimes pas encore, it means also “not again”. So you have to be careful of the meaning of the sentence. So that was for encore; again, another / more, even and sometimes not yet when there is pas before encore. |
| So let's move on to the next one, toujours. Toujours first meaning is kind of easy. It means “always”, toujours as “always”. So if you want to say, je suis toujours en retard, in English, it’s “I’m always late”. In English, the negative form would be like the opposite of always is never so you want to say… in French, you just use the opposite form of toujours which is jamais “never”. We've seen that before, jamais “never”. |
| So here, you can see that jamais is in the same time the opposite form of toujours, but also the opposite form of déjà. So usually, the classic form of the of jamais, the classic counterpart of jamais is toujours, but jamais is always translated by “never” in English. In this case, it’s never and here again, it’s never. So je ne suis jamais en retard like en retard, the same, je ne suis jamais en retard. But you can also say je ne suis pas toujours en retard and the difference between je ne suis jamais en retard and je ne suis pas toujours en retard is the same than in English. When you say I am never late or I am not always late like I am never late like it means, no way that can happen, it never happened before like I'm never late. You can say like I'm not always late like sometimes, but it's not always so exactly the same meaning in the difference between the two. So here depending on the meaning, the real opposite, the real negation that you want to use, you have to choose between jamais or pas toujours, but it's the same than in English when you have to choose between never or not always. So here, it's an easy one, really easy one. |
| Then there is another one which is encore / toujours, toujours / encore. Here, you can substitute toujours with encore again, same than here. You have to translate it by “still”. So here, “still”. When you want to say I am still here, I am still here, you can say je suis encore là or je suis toujours là. So here, it's like this one is belonging to the two categories so toujours and encore, je suis encore là, je suis toujours là. It's roughly the same meaning. It's exactly the same than here, pas encore, toujours pas, encore, toujours like it's roughly the same meaning. Here, it's “yet” and here, it's “still” so be careful, je suis encore là, je suis toujours là. |
| Je ne suis plus là is the negative form of this like two positive forms and just one negative form and again, it's like here, it's like not anymore. So when you want to say “I am still here” in English, you want to do the opposite so you want to say “I am not here anymore” in French, je ne suis plus là. So plus again, even though like plus you can see here and here like the negative form of encore, but also the negative form of toujours in some cases. But it's not always the same cases because here, encore means “another / more” and here, it means “still”. But in English, it's quite easy because in both cases like je ne veux plus de café “I don’t want coffee anymore”, je ne suis plus là “I’m not here anymore” like this one is easy because plus is always ne plus, ne plus, ne plus, it’s always “not anymore”. So this one, it's not a problem. Plus is always the same translation. It's like jamais is always “never”. So the negative form is not that complicated to translate. What is important is all the meanings of the words here and then you have to know the opposite form but it's like in English usually. |
| So here, we've seen that toujours, two different cases and also I didn't put it back here, but here, you have another meaning with toujours which is “not yet”. So toujours, three meanings; always still, or if it's negative “not yet”, but if it's negative, it's sometimes also “not always”. So let's sum it up, toujours, you can translate it by “always” or “still” and pas toujours which is the negative form, you can translate it by “not always” or “not yet” toujours pas, okay. |
| So here, you've seen that we can use encore and toujours in this case and here again, pas encore, toujours pas, please note that pas is not in the same place depending on the adverb encore and toujours, pas encore, toujours pas. So here, you have two different… like it's almost synonym, two cases, two adverbs that you can use, but just one situation. So you can wonder if there is a nuance and there is a nuance. So here, usually when you use toujours pas, so I’m just talking about the negative one, when you say toujours pas instead of pas encore, it's stronger like you emphasize what you're saying. Usually, it's the same but if you want to say je ne suis pas encore arrivé, it means, oh okay, like someone asked you where are you, and you say oh, je ne suis pas encore arrivé “I have not arrived yet” so I’m still not here. But if you want to say je ne suis toujours pas arrivé, it can mean something stronger like you’re tired or you have like a plaintive tone like I'm still not here like I have struggles with the subway or something like that. So when you say to toujours pas, it’s a bit more like you were not satisfied with the situation like you are not here and you’re not satisfied with that. So usually, the most common one is always encore, you use encore. This is more common, but if you want to sound more plaintive, you can use toujours pas instead and if you hear someone saying that, maybe it would be more plaintive, but it’s not always the case like it’s really subtle and usually, we don't really pay attention to the real nuance between those two. So this is the case when this is negative. Toujours pas is stronger than pas encore and maybe more plaintive. |
| But here is another one. When you want to say j'ai toujours faim, you can also say j'ai encore faim. As I said here, it's the same like je suis encore là, je suis toujours là. Here, it’s the same. I'm using this toujours and this encore, I’m using this one. So j'ai toujours faim or j'ai encore faim, it means like “I am still hungry”, but be careful because just for this one, j'ai toujours faim, you can also translate it by “I'm always hungry”. It depends on the meaning so here you have two meanings. This one with only j'ai toujours faim, you have two meanings, but this one, j'ai encore faim, you have only one meaning like “I am always hungry”. So I'm going to clarify that. This one, you can translate it like this and for this one, it's only this one. So as you can see here, in English, you have two different meanings like you can understand the difference. But in French, j'ai toujours faim like those two sentences, you can translate them with the same sentence if you use j'ai toujours faim, but if you really want to make the disambiguation, you translate the first one by this one and you translate the second one by this one, but you can also translate the second one with the first one, j'ai toujours faim. |
| So this is just like to make you more attentive to choose this possibility, but here I want to explain the nuance between encore and toujours. So I am using j'ai toujours faim as “I am still hungry”. So let's say we don't care about I am always hungry because it's not the meaning that is interesting here. Let's say that I want to say j'ai toujours faim, not as “I am always hungry”, but but “I am still hungry”. What is the difference between j'ai toujours faim and j'ai encore faim? “I am still hungry, two ways to say it in French. To be honest, there is no real nuance between this, j'ai toujours faim “I am still hungry” j'ai encore faim, j'ai toujours faim, it’s roughly the same meaning. But here, maybe one subtlety would be like one thing very subtle is j'ai encore faim. It means “I want more”. When you say j'ai encore faim “I want more”, but if you say, j'ai toujours faim, it means the situation is still the same. So with the positive one, toujours, emphasizes the fact that the situation is still the same. Here, when you want to say j'ai encore faim, since encore has a meaning of “again” or “more” like you want something, you want addition. So the subtlety, the nuance would be with this, you want something, you expect something, you expect an addition. But j'ai toujours faim, it’s more like you’re stating that the situation is still the same. |
| So we've seen that toujours, encore and déjà have many ways to translate. You can translate them in many ways.Déjà “already / yet” or “ever / already” and if you want the negative form, it's pas encore, toujours pas or jamais. |
| Here, for encore, you have three meanings; “again” or “another / more” like you want addition like encore implies that you want addition like encore plus. C'est encore plus intéressant is a bit different like even more. |
| Then for toujours, there is the “always” and there is “still” which is kind of similar to encore, but there is also this toujours pas that you have to be careful with - toujours. So here, toujours, please refer to this, this and this and for encore, refer to this, this, this and also this and this. |
| So that's all for today. I hope you understood the differences between those three adverbs. See you on next time. |
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