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He speaks only English


mint
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Its one that I often get confused by especially as in speech people often drop the negation so when I hear both the ne and the que it sounds to my ears like "not only..........."

And then there is when I read books, with the short lines I read the "ne" and it can be a couple of lines before the "que" finally appears by which time I have interpreted the whole sentence as being not  blah blah blah as opposed to only blah blah blah.

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You got me wondering why I said that now.

I just think it sounds better with the l' .

Or maybe it's a negative thing, I'd probably say 'je parle anglais' but I'd say 'je ne parle pas l'anglais'.

Anyway here are some statistics according to how many times google found things:

"parle anglais" 2,710,000

"parle l'anglais" 66,000

"ne parle que l'anglais" 91,000

"ne parle qu'anglais" 68,600

"ne parle que anglais" 10,700

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I've done this before, for friends..

I don't mind, I understand .

I've always found the English who live in France and don't speak the language at all very brave, in a sense, because personnally, if I lived in a foreign country whose language I don't speak, I'd be scared that if anything should happen to me, and I was taken to hospital, I would not understand what the staff say about what they are going to do to me !!

Don't know why, that's always been my first thought !

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Hi, Twinkle, long time no see!

Or rather: Je ne vous ai pas vue depuis longtemps!  Phew, hope that's right because negatives and passé composé have not always been easy for me [:(]

And, I suppose, if we are REALLY going to nitpick, does "qu'est-ce" not have a hyphen?[:P]

Twinks, I hope that, now you have graced us with your presence, you won't stay away so long again?[:)]

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