Parlez-vous avec Paul

GordonA2Kwiziq community member

Parlez-vous avec Paul

In the sentence in the two-question quiz, it asks me to translate a possible sentence fragment of    Since there is NO punctuation, this sentence can be taken as either an imperative statement "Talk with Paul!" or as the interrogative "Do you speak with Paul?"
I realize that it is in the question section, but it is still a subject-verb inversion.

Can this sentence get punctuation added or an audio file added so that it is easier to know which intent is implied?

 

Unless I am misremembering imperative statements...

Thank you.

Asked 1 year ago
MaartenC1 Kwiziq Q&A super contributor Correct answer

The actual fragment is not showing in your post, but ‘parlez-vous …’ (verb-subject) is always a question. On the other hand ‘Vous parlez …’ can be a question or a statement so needs context/punctuation to determine,  but it is not in imperative form. Imperative statements drop the subject pronoun as per the attached lesson : Conjugate regular verbs in the imperative mood in French (L'Impératif)

ChrisC1 Kwiziq Q&A super contributor Correct answer

To add the explicit examples to Maarten's reply:

Parlez-vous avec Paul? -- Are you talking with Paul?
Parlez avec Paul! -- Talk with Paul!
Vous parlez avec Paul. -- You are talking with Paul.
Vous parlez avec Paul? -- You are talking with Paul?

CélineKwiziq team memberCorrect answer

Bonjour à tous,

Following a recent comment and a discussion within the French team, we decided to update this particular test question (Parlez-vous avec Paul) and other questions following the same structure as the way they were worded was too confusing to users.

I hope this is helpful.

Bonne journée !

Parlez-vous avec Paul

In the sentence in the two-question quiz, it asks me to translate a possible sentence fragment of    Since there is NO punctuation, this sentence can be taken as either an imperative statement "Talk with Paul!" or as the interrogative "Do you speak with Paul?"
I realize that it is in the question section, but it is still a subject-verb inversion.

Can this sentence get punctuation added or an audio file added so that it is easier to know which intent is implied?

 

Unless I am misremembering imperative statements...

Thank you.

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