Re: Une Question

Douglas Koller writes:

> How do you handle a quote within a quote in French? In other words,
> *punctuation-wise*, what do you do with a sentence like:
I'm not at home all this week, so I can't pull out any of my French
novels and get a real example for you. But I've seen things like this:

    blah blah blah narrative blah

     - Quand est-il mort?
     - Hier. Il a dit <<Je vous deteste!>> et a ferme les yeux.

    blah blah more narrative

I've also seen, extremely confusingly,

    blah blah blah narrative blah

     - Quand est-il mort?
     - Hier. Il a dit, Je vous deteste!, et a ferme les yeux.

    blah blah more narrative

Until you get used to it, French prose with dialogue can be very hard to
follow. The punctuation reminds me of early modern English spelling. I
recently read Ben Franklin's autobiography, so the pain is recent. :)


--
http://chris.nodewarrior.org/

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