Ce vs il/elle
I'm trying to learn French using Pimsleur as my main method. Sometimes when the lesson asks me to say a sentence with the word "it" in it, I'll say ce and the correct response will end up being il or elle instead. And vise versa, I'll say il or elle and the correct answer will be ce . I'm getting confused when to cay ce VS when to say il / elle.

Question

Ce vs il/elle
I'm trying to learn French using Pimsleur as my main method. Sometimes when the lesson asks me to say a sentence with the word "it" in it, I'll say ce and the correct response will end up being il or elle instead. And vise versa, I'll say il or elle and the correct answer will be ce . I'm getting confused when to cay ce  VS when to say il / elle.

Answer

Salut Garrett, Pimsleur, je l'ai utilisé aussi mais pour le russe. A mon avis, toutes leurs phrases sont justes. Comme le dit Chloé, il existe un "il" impersonnel (il pleut, il fait froid) mais "ce" peut aussi s'utiliser comme sujet : "ce n'est pas vrai" (it isn't true). On trouve aussi "ça" : "ça n'a rien à voir", pour traduire "this has nothing to...". Bon courage

Answer

When after "it" you have a verb concerning the weather (it is raining, it is snowing), in French it will be the "il" (also named "impersonal il") ex: It's raining > Il pleut. I think this is the main ambiguity.
In any other case, "il" refers to a male word, "elle" to female word and "ce" is used either to present a situation (="ce" didn't refers to an object / animal / person) or before a noun to be more precise. Like "A dog > This dog." become "Un chien > ce chien".
Hope it will help :) !

Answers · 2

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