Quick help with French

Sorry, my translation skills need a little help

If I want to say “I’d like to agree a date for delivery” what’s the best way of doing so - fairly infomally.

“Je voudrais que nous nous mettons en accord pour la date de livraison” would, I guess, convey what I want but sounds/looks (to my English ears/eyes) as stiff as a board

Can I just say “Je voudrais agréer une date pour la livraison”?

Something with parvenir à or prevoir??

Fixer?

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Yes, that would work, thanks.

je veux
I want…

I’m inclined to stick with voudrais for that bit.

Voudrais is more polite.

@anon88169868 Have you learned nothing!

You just need to say it in English but a bit slower and a lot louder!

If that doesn’t work try it in English with a slight comedy French accent.

If after all of this they haven’t got it then they are clearly deaf!


In the meantime I will continue with Learn French with Paul Noble via Audible.

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After the bonjouring… I always start with…

S’il vous plaît…Monsieur/Madame (as appropriate)…

then in this instance:

Est ce qu’on peut discuter la date de livraison?

There are so many variations on a theme and each of us will use whatever we are most comfortable with… Relaxing and not minding if we make grammatical mistakes - that is half the battle. :relaxed:

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I would stick with voudrais.
You could say convenir if you want something a bit fancier than fixer.

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It was for an email, now sent. I went with fixer which seemed to be the right tone.

Thanks for the pointers guys :slight_smile:

Excellent idea to use email.

Gives both sides the opportunity to take time to properly understand what is being “said” by the other party.

:relaxed::relaxed:

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My French is not really up to phone conversations - even if I had time during the day to make a call. Previous discussions on the forum have highlighted that even quite competent French speakers struggle with the telephone.

Also I’m not over in France until next weekend

So email is definitely the best option - but even there, it is entirely possible to wind up saying something subtly (or not so subtly) different to what one intends.

I usually try to keep things simple and run the message through Google and/or Deepl before sending. Not perfect but hopefully would prevent a real howler.

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Reminds me of my son who was close to being top of his class in French at prep school. We asked him to book an hotel at a posh northern France resort we were flying into with friends and were really proud to hear him speak so fluently and confidently.
Alas, when we arrived we found that he had booked the wrong weekend!

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Oh dear the poor lad must have been mortified - hope that the hotel got you sorted out.

:rofl::zipper_mouth_face: We swiftly discovered that be it spoken or written… for the unwary, phrases can mean the opposite of what they appear to… :zipper_mouth_face:

Il n’y a pas mal de chose à faire.

He’s so laid back - he just smiled and said “oh” or something like that. He’s a pragmatist (not unlike his dad). His view was - well I didn’t want to do that anyway so in future, you’ll do it yourself, won’t you - and we did :wink:
The hotel were very helpful. They found us a room at the back (probably intended for staff) in two parts separated by a curtain - very cosy!
All the other hotels in the resort were well booked up.

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Indeed - one or two others have come up, starting to wish I’d made a list.

Before Google Translate of course… simply hearing the words"pas mal" meant we thought all was well… ooops

I tend to use Reverso which has examples “in context”.

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When our daughter was about thirteen, her Mum, her school pal and I were flying out of Marseilles with RyanAir to Dublin. Now that she was “all grown up” I asked her what time we needed to be at the airport and she checked the boarding passes. We arrived in the Terminal just as the flight took off. What could you do but laugh. Luckily there was another flight later in the day but it cost a grand to rebook the four of us. I’m sure sure her pal’s parents thought we were nuts. Which was quite amusing as he’s a trick cyclist :slight_smile:

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