African weirdness

[dangtri]

This YouTube video made laugh out loud and roll my eyes at the same time.

[A friend asked what the guy says in the end. The original French is "Vous auriez mieux fait de m'en demander une gentiment," which freely and idiomatically translates into "You should have asked nicely"; literally "You would have done better to ask me for one nicely."]

Comments

[vasilatos]

OK that was a tense I don't run into that often.
"Auriez" just doesn't come up that often.

[dangtri.livejournal.com]

Madame, it's a bog-standard conditional.

"Auriez" is pretty much like "would have" if the subject's you_plural. Maybe you don't often speak French to entire groups of people.

To put it mathematically:
"would have" = {"aurais", "aurait", "aurions", "auriez", "auraient"}

[vasilatos]

"Maybe you don't often speak French to entire groups of people."

That's putting it mildly. I'm amazed at how languages fall out of my head. :-)