Nous ne wakarimasons pas francais

[flemmings]

amazon.fr has sent me my cent demons. This is nice. They tell me in the notice:

Le service de livraison utilise ne propose malheureusement pas de suivi des expeditions.

After five minutes' blankness and useless recourse to a dictionary, by dint of employing the same kind of semi-psychic ability that I often use to wrest meaning from Japanese, I *think* that *may* mean We do not offer a tracking service.

Anyone know for sure? she asks pathetically.

Comments

[summer-queen.livejournal.com]

*scratches her head*

That's what I get out of it, though that sentence structure throws me off.

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

Kyaa. Try:
Malheureusement, le service de livraison [que nous utilisons] ne propose pas de suivi des expeditions.

Hey, too bad, but the service we use doesn't offer tracking for packages.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Y'know, like, I was all happy to get a *real* French notice from a *real* French person cause the (mandatory on labels) French you see around here is often some Anglophone doing a literal translation of the English and not to be trusted. But all amazon.coms are the same amazon.com, which surprised me a bit, and I strongly suspect this French person hails from the wrong side of the Channel and possibly even the wrong side of the Atlantic.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

See, the only suivi I can find is an adjective, and in my day proposer took a direct object. Is this a new usage? (And surely that's a really odd place to put malheureusement?)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

adjective

Participle, even.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I had to try--

je bois le lait (I drink the milk that's here)
je bois du lait (I drink milk, at the moment or generally speaking)
je ne bois pas de lait (I don't drink i.e. partake of such a thing as milk)

BUT

je n'aime pas le lait (I don't like milk)

Er, it kind of makes sense? XD

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Mhh... it still feels like it ought to be le, since I see no partitive sense in proposer, but your French reflexes are certainly better than mine. And googling tells me that suivi does indeed seem to be a recentish noun, is maybe why my 30-years-old Larousse doesn't have it.

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

I'm always looking stuff up on this site. ^_^

Le suivi is a noun (http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/freng.exe?word=suivi) as well. ("Follow-up" as a noun is used, like, constantly in medical articles.) If you drop "de suivi" into Google as a phrase, you get shippers like UPS up top, so I take it that it also functions as the generic term for tracking.

A secondary use of proposer is to offer (http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/freng.exe?word=proposer).

I agree. It's a very weird place to put malheureusement, I think. French isn't that different from English in this respect.

[incandescens]

Malheureusement the French is not pretty, but that is indeed what it means. No tracking service on that delivery service.

[mbwun.livejournal.com]

Not being very helpful but amused that I'm not the only one that uses the "knowing a little of the language is enough to find what you want on a shopping site and empty your wallet" method.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The mortifying thing is that Japanese websites are now a piece of cake compared to French ones. At least I know all, or most of, the requisite vocab. Am still antsy about ordering off Japanese websites, of course.