Manquer (de) + thing = To miss / lack something

Hi Serian,

The verbs 'manquer' or 'rater' can both be used  for 'to miss a concert or a train' ,  'rater' being less formal than 'manquer'.

You would use 'rater'  only for to fail an exam e.g. 

J 'ai raté mon permis de conduire/ mon bac = I failed my driving test/my baccalaurate

or even - 

J'ai raté ma vie = I made a real hash of my life

There is another informal way to say to miss in French which you might have heard - 'louper' :

J'ai loupé le premier  épisode de cette série = I missed the first episode of this series.

Hope this helps!

Sorry, correction. Chaleur is fem. , so

Je manque de ta chaleur.

Hi Paul,

You can use manquer de with a human attribute as in the lesson example, 

'Il manque toujours de courage.'

You could say:

"Il/je manque d'humilité , de chaleur, d'humour" about someone else or about yourself.

In the sense of to lack meaning to be without you would indeed use,

'ne pas avoir'

Cette voiture n'a pas la puissance de celle-là. = This car lacks the power of that one.

Le nouvel employé n'a pas les compétences de la personne quil remplace. = The new employee lacks the skills of the person he is replacing.

Je n'ai pas les moyens d'aller en vacances cette année. = I haven't got / I lack the means to go on holiday, this year.

Hope this helps!

 

This is indeed extremely tricky! The example of "J'ai manqué le train" is a form of transitive usage of the verb ie. the verb taking a direct object "le train". The example "J'ai manqué de le concert ..." is more difficult to explain -- it looks like a transitive usage indirect in the sense of "being deprived of." So without knowledge of the full sentence, it seems to me that the meaning is that something has caused the subject "j" to be "deprived of" the particular concert rather than a general sense of a concert. That's my input, but I think that it would be nice to see a further comment from an expert. Good luck, Jim

Hi both,

This sounds like a typo error to me ,

I missed the concert of , should be,

j'ai manqué le concert de... 

Will pass on your comments and try to get it rectified.

I have now checked and the correct answer is correctly marked as:

J'ai manqué le concert de Michael Jackson en 1992 à Paris.

Hope this helps!

I agree, the two English sentences you cite carry the same meaning in English. I would expect that they both be counted as correct. Did you find something different? -- Chris.

Bonjour Siner, I noticed both of your posts; however, I am unable to understand your question. manquer(de) conjugates like any other -er verb. The peculiar with this verb is this: If I want to say «I miss you» in French it becomes ---> «Tu me manques». As can be seen, manquer conjugates as expected even in the plural: «we missed you» ---> «tu nous manques» or «vous nous manquez»

Thank you and sorry for not being clear. My question was about the form of ; je manque le spectacle or je manque de sucre... Because on the lesson all the examples are in singulier form so I was wondering if it is a form a kind of " Il faut " just in one way. (Sorry English is not my mother langue as well so it is a bit hard to explain for me.) in the form of "we miss you" we conjugate the verb for "you " vous nous manquez " so that's why I was a little bit lost but now I can see that we should consider it as a normal way of the conjugation as" nous manquons d'argent ." I hope I can explain my self better this time but anyway I think I found the answer by trying to explain my question ;)

Bonjour Siner, si tu veux dire "I miss my pens" you would translate this as "je manque de mes stylos". Comme tu peux voire, le principe reste le même dans le pluriel. J'espère d'avoir pu t'aider. -- Chris. (Attention, le français n'est pas ma langue maternelle.)

Moi de nouveau.... "We miss our pens" c'est "Nous manquons de nos stylos." -- Chris.

Bonjour Chris , Le deuxième example c'est correspond à mon question ,exactement. merci

Bonjour Siner, I noticed both of your posts; however, I am unable to understand your question. manquer(de) conjugates like any other -er verb. The peculiar with this verb is this: If I want to say «I miss you» in French it becomes ---> «Tu me manques». As can be seen, manquer conjugates as expected even in the plural: «we missed you» ---> «tu nous manques» or «vous nous manquez»

Bonjour John, No, you still need the preposition: Je ne manque de rien.

Hmm, so how do I know whether it means "I lack nothing" or "I miss nothing"? How come "I miss the train" doesn't require the preposition "de" but "I miss nothing" does?

Perhaps I misunderstood what you were trying to say. What do you feel is the difference between "I miss nothing" and "I lack nothing"? For me, they're the same thing - I have everything I need in terms of physical objects that you possess. Missing a train or school is different - you're not physically missing them in the sense that you're unable to hold them in your hands. Rather, you were supposed to be in / on them and weren't - you missed catching / being at them. Does that make sense?

As a native USA speaker, when I hear “I miss nothing” I understand that to mean “Nothing escapes my notice... I miss no detail... nothing gets by me”.  The french phrase “Je ne manque rien” makes sense to me in this context  

However “I lack nothing” is very different and means “I have everything I need”.   Here I would use “Je ne manque de rien”

Would a french native weigh in on that please?

Bonjour Joakim, It's a question of meaning. When you mean "I miss" something (you missed the train, you missed school, you miss your plane) the noun is abstract and there's no de. When you mean "I lack" (you lack sugar, you lack money, you lack time), the noun is concrete - you are physically missing the object - you need de.

Ok, that makes sense, thank you. Although in a later exercise it was "manque de patience". Isn't patience also someting abstract?

I think it may not be helpful to think about it in terms of concrete and abstract (and I think the examples Laura gave are not entirely accurate - trains, schools, etc are concrete nouns). Rather, stick with thinking about miss vs lack. If you are saying 'Je manque de patience', you are saying that you lack patience, rather than you missed its arrival.

Bonjour Joakim,

We've now added more precision to this lesson as to why you only use de or d' : indeed, "To express lacking <something>, you will use manquer de or d' + thing.
You won't use the partitive articles (du, de l', de la, des) here, just as you wouldn't say "I lack the sugar" but simply "I lack sugar")."

Here is a link to the updated lesson with added examples:
https://progress.lawlessfrench.com/revision/grammar/manquer-de-thing-to-miss-lack-something

Voilà !

Merci !