# French "on"



## Boljon

The indefinite pronoun "one / you" or French "on" in various languages:

Chinese: 人（们）；你
German: man
Italian: si
Japanese:（一般的に）人は、人は（だれでも）
Korean:사람은 / 누구｢나[라도]

How can I say that in: Latin, Portugues, Spanish, Esperanto and more languages?
Thank you!


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## Honour

In Turkish there is more than one way to mean it. 

1. We could simply use passive voice in singular 3rd person
e.g. on ne fume pas dans le bureau : ofiste sigara *içilmez*

2. We could use, somehow, reflexive pronoun "kendi".

Depending on context,

3. WE could use indefinite pronouns such as, bazıları, biri/birisi/birileri.

Bazısı, Bazıları: Certains/Some
Biri/Birisi, Birileri: One, Ones* (when you are not sure about the number of people)


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## Tim~!

Boljon said:


> How can I say that in: Latin, Portugues, Spanish, Esperanto and more languages?
> Thank you!



Spanish is very similar to Italian, in that you can use the reflexive form as an indefinite pronoun: Se puede fumar = One can smoke.  I believe they also use the 'they' form that I've just used in this sentence too; 'En Argentina se habla Español' can also be rendered 'En Argentina hablan Español'. 

Esperanto is very straightforward, seeing as it uses the French form; the pronoun is _oni_.  'Oni fumas ĉi tie' = 'One smokes here', 'Oni ne parolas la Anglan en Peruo' = 'One doesn't speak English in Peru'.


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## Frank06

Hi,


Boljon said:


> The indefinite pronoun "one / you" or French "on" in various languages:



In *Dutch* we use 'men'.

But as in so many other languages, other pronouns / words can be used: je, ze, de mensen, ...

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Outsider

Boljon said:


> Italian: si
> [...]
> 
> How can I say that in: Latin, Portugues, Spanish, Esperanto and more languages?


In Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, you have the passivizing particles _si_/_se_/_se_, which often provide a good translation of _on_, but I would say that they are not quite the same thing.

For one thing, French also has a passivizing _se_/_s'_, though it's not used as often as in the other three languages. And the value of _on_ is not so much passive, as it is generic. For contrast, look at the following sentences:

English: _We walk dogs._
French: _On promenade les chiens._ (--> 3rd. person *singular*, agreeing with the subject _on_)
Spanish: _Se pasean perros._ (--> 3rd. person *plural*, agreeing with the subject "dogs")
Portuguese: _Passeiam-se cães._ (--> 3rd. person *plural*, agreeing with the subject "dogs") 

In some cases, _on_ can also be colloquial. Still, there is no question that the meaning of is similar.

Spanish also has *uno*.
Portuguese also has *a gente*.

Catalan does have *om*, which seems to work pretty much as _on_.

In English, there is *one*. Again, the usage is not quite the same as in French; it's much less frequent. But the idea is similar.


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## vince

French can also use the Latin/Romance "se", but "on" is much more common.

Le the se boit avec du sucre: One drinks tea with sugar (better: On boit le the avec du sucre)


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## Outsider

vince said:


> French can also use the Latin/Romance "se", but "on" is much more common.


"On" (<_hominem_) is no less Latin/Romance than "se".


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## mcibor

In Polish there is no such word.
We use grammar structures to say something with undefined person.

You can say that "się" is such a word, but it's a reflective pronoun

One drinks tea with sugar

1. You can use passive
Herbatę pito słodzoną - The tea was drank "sugared"

2. Use the finished verb
Herbatę posłodzono - The tea was "sugared"

3. Use the reflective clause
Herbatę pije się z cukrem - The tea is being drank with sugar

So the nearest word in Polish to what you need is "się", however here the meaning is a bit different, because it's not a personal pronoun. It just points the subject, in this example się points at herbata.

To show more examples:
(Ja) myję się - I wash myself - się points at me
Ręce myje się - One washes hands - się points at hands, not at person.

Regards
Michal


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## robbie_SWE

It's very complicated in Romanian, because a direct equivalent does not exist. The closest is the pronoun "_se_". I will give some comparative examples: 
 
Fr: _*On mange la pomme.*_ 
Ro: _*Mărul se mănâncă. *_

Fr: _*On prend l'argent. *_
Ro: _*Banii se iau. *_

As you can see, the word order changes in Romanian making the sentence passive. This is because the pronoun "_se_" lacks the same function as the French pronoun "_on_".

Hope it helps! 

 robbie


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## mcibor

robbie_SWE said:


> It's very complicated in Romanian, because a direct equivalent does not exist. The closest is the pronoun "_se_". I will give some comparative examples:
> 
> Fr: _*On mange la pomme.*_
> Ro: _*Mărul se mănâncă. *_
> 
> Fr: _*On prend l'argent. *_
> Ro: _*Banii se iau. *_
> 
> As you can see, the word order changes in Romanian making the sentence passive. This is because the pronoun "_se_" lacks the same function as the French pronoun "_on_".
> 
> Hope it helps!
> 
> robbie



It seems to be similar to Polish. But in Polish it's even more difficult, as you may say it in two different ways, changing the meaning:

I'm not sure if I undersood the above examples correctly, but will give a try

One eats oranges
Pl: Pomarańcze się je - use, especially when you are correcting someone, eg he's trying to drink the orange 
Pl: Pomarańcze się jada - use, when speaking of eg. some country, where they grow oranges and so they eat them regularly: We włoszech jada się pomarańcze (In Italy they eat oranges)

However washing hands is always one: Ręce się myje, this verb doesn't have such grammar thingy as eats: _jeść (je / jada)_ has.
To say the truth I even don't know how to name it.

Regards
Michal


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## Thomas1

Outsider said:


> [...]
> English: _We walk dogs._
> French: _On promenade les chiens._ (--> 3rd. person *singular*, agreeing with the subject _on_)
> Spanish: _Se pasean perros._ (--> 3rd. person *plural*, agreeing with the subject "dogs")
> Portuguese: _Passeiam-se cães._ (--> 3rd. person *plural*, agreeing with the subject "dogs")
> [...]


Hm... I would want to ask about one thing. I don't speak Spanish nor Portuguese so I'd like some confirmation that I got it right/wrong. Are really the dogs the subject in the Spanish and Portuguese sentences? I mean the whole sounds then as if _the dogs take themselves for a walk. _Or is the verb phrase a kind of impersonal construction here and the dogs are the objects that agree with the main verb (meaning more or less _one walks the dogs_)?

Thank you,
Tom


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## Thomas1

mcibor said:


> In Polish there is no such word.
> We use grammar structures to say something with undefined person.
> 
> You can say that "się" is such a word, but it's a reflective pronoun
> 
> One drinks tea with sugar
> 
> 1. You can use passive
> Herbatę pito słodzoną - The tea was drank "sugared"
> I think not many people would use this wording. I mean it is grammatically correct but its pallatability is almost nul. I'd definitely inlcine to use the impersonal cornstruction, which IMHO renders the French _on_ quite well in many cases. So:
> _Pija się słodzoną herbatę._
> 2. Use the finished verb
> Herbatę posłodzono - The tea was "sugared"
> Here I'd change the order: _Posłodzono herbatę. _as you rather want to accent the action not the object of it.
> 
> 3. Use the reflective clause
> Herbatę pije się z cukrem - The tea is being drank with sugar
> This sentence sounds Polish.  In other cases dependant on the context we can use the particle _trzeba._
> 
> So the nearest word in Polish to what you need is "się", however here the meaning is a bit different, because it's not a personal pronoun. It just points the subject, in this example się points at herbata.
> Here I disagree. _herbata_ is not the subject of the sentence as it cannot be drunk by itself. It is the object here. It's simply the construction that expresses the passive meaning, although there's no passive construction here. It's like English _it is said that _which equals Polish _Mówi się._
> 
> To show more examples:
> (Ja) myję się - I wash myself - się points at me
> Ręce myje się - One washes hands - się points at hands, not at person.
> You gave two examples of two different meanings of _się_. The firs one is indeed a reflexive pronoun whereas the second one is a kind of a one that I above mentioned.
> 
> Regards
> Michal


In conclusion I think that the closest equivalent to the French _on_ is the _passive _usage of _się_. It all, as usually, depends on the context. 


Tom


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## Thomas1

mcibor said:


> It seems to be similar to Polish. But in Polish it's even more difficult, as you may say it in two different ways, changing the meaning:
> 
> I'm not sure if I undersood the above examples correctly, but will give a try
> 
> One eats oranges
> Pl: Pomarańcze się je - use, especially when you are correcting someone, eg he's trying to drink the orange
> Pl: Pomarańcze się jada - use, when speaking of eg. some country, where they grow oranges and so they eat them regularly: We włoszech jada się pomarańcze (In Italy they eat oranges)
> It is more about the interative versus momentary verbs.
> 
> However washing hands is always one: Ręce się myje, this verb doesn't have such grammar thingy as eats: _jeść (je / jada)_ has.
> To say the truth I even don't know how to name it.
> 
> Regards
> Michal


Again, two different usages of _się_. Besides you can use _myć _without the refelxive pronoun. 
I don't want to delve here into details on this since it would be far off topic so if you are inclined to discuss it on the Slavic languages forum we could have a nice thread on that. 

Tom


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## tanzhang

IN TAGALOG:

In Tagalog I think it is already implied based on the sentence structure...

Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan.

One who does not know how to look back to where he came from, is not going to reach his/her(ones) destination.

Ang - a subject marker
hindi - not/no
marunong - someone that knows how to do
lumingon - look back
sa - place marker
pinangalingan - where one comes from
makakarating: root word is "dating" meaning where someone has gone to
paroroonan - destination


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## Outsider

Thomas1 said:


> Hm... I would want to ask about one thing. I don't speak Spanish nor Portuguese so I'd like some confirmation that I got it right/wrong. Are really the dogs the subject in the Spanish and Portuguese sentences?


Prescriptively and traditionally, yes. (Though, in all honesty, this is something that confuses even native speakers.)



Thomas1 said:


> I mean the whole sounds then as if _the dogs take themselves for a walk. _Or is the verb phrase a kind of impersonal construction here and the dogs are the objects that agree with the main verb (meaning more or less _one walks the dogs_)?


That's what I said, or tried to. In this case, the word _se_ is part of a passive construction, not a reflexive pronoun.

P.S. Perhaps a translation closer to the original is "Dogs _are taken_ for a walk".


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## Thomas1

Outsider said:


> Prescriptively and traditionally, yes. (Though, in all honesty, this is something that confuses even native speakers.)
> 
> That's what I said, or tried to. In this case, the word _se_ is part of a passive construction, not a reflexive pronoun.
> P.S. Perhaps a translation closer to the original is "Dogs _are taken_ for a walk".


Thanks. I'd like to mention one more thing on the construction described/exemplified by mcibor and me; it always joins with a verb in the third person singular and the sentences including it are usually (I say usually since I don't know if it holds true for all, but I suspect so since I can't remember any with one) subjectless that makes them quite impersonal in reception.

On second thought, I recalled something else, there's one more construction that sounds similar, but it differs a little from the one abovementioned, let me give some examples:
_Ta książka dobrze się czyta._
In English:
_This book reads well._
French:
_Cette livre se lit bien._
Another example:
_Te bagietki sprzedaja się dobrze._
In English it would be:
_These baguettes sell well._
As far as I know the French would say:
_Celles baguettes se vendent bien._ (no _on_)
It gives some tones of impersonality and even passiveness. Could it be the same/similar to the construction as you gave in the examples in your first post?
Here the main verb indeed agrees with the, say, subject, but everyone knows that the book is read by a reader and the baguettes are sold/bought by a vendor/customer.
Note that we can of course change the order in Polish so:
_Dom się buduje._
_A house builds._
_Une maison se construit._
I don't know how these translations sound in English (to me dire) and French but in Polish it is quite normal way of wording.

Tom


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## Outsider

Thomas1 said:


> On second thought, I recalled something else, there's one more construction that sounds similar, but it differs a little from the one abovementioned, let me give some examples:
> _Ta ksiazka dobrze sie czyta._
> In English:
> _This book reads well._
> French:
> _Cette livre *se* lit bien._
> 
> Another example:
> _Te bagietki sprzedaja sie dobrze._
> In English it would be:
> _These baguettes sell well._
> As far as I know the French would say:
> _Celles baguettes se vendent bien._ (no _on_)
> It gives some tones of impersonality and even passivness. Could it be the same/similar to the construction as you gave in the examples in your first post?


Yes, it is the same.


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## mcibor

Thomas1 said:


> Here the main verb indeed agrees with the, say, subject, but everyone knows that the book is read by a reader and the baguettes are sold/bought by a vendor/customer.
> Note that we can of course change the order in Polish so:
> _Dom się buduje._
> _A house builds._
> _Une maison se construit._
> I don't know how these translations sound in English (to me dire) and French but in Polish it is quite normal way of wording.
> 
> Tom



I'm sure that in English you cannot say _A house builds_. The best translation, that is gramatically correct would be sth like
_A house is being built_ - passive continuous
And thank you for your post. I wanted to expression the double meaning of word się, maybe I didn't express it too much, because I didn't know how to call that non reflexive meaning.

Michal


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## Outsider

It's a bit late now, but I can't help making some minor corrections to Thomas' examples:

_Cette livre se lit bien.
_
_Cettes baguettes se vendent bien._


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## macta123

In Hindi :
 Koi [ spelt : Koyee ]


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## Hakro

In *Finnish* we have two possibilities: Usually we use passive voice:
_One reads_ this book with pleasure = Tätä kirjaa _luetaan_ mielellään.

We can also use the impersonal voice that looks like 3rd person singular but there's no subject:
_One reads_ this book with pleasure = Tätä kirjaa _lukee_ mielellään.
(_He reads_ this book with pleasure = Tätä kirjaa _hän lukee_ mielellään.)

There are many cases where the impersonal voice can't be used but also other cases where passive voice is impossible.

In *Swedish* the equivalent of French "on" or English "one" is "man" and the construction of the sentence is similar.



Outsider said:


> It's a bit late now, but I can't help making some minor corrections to Thomas' examples:
> 
> _Ce livre se lit bien.
> _
> _Cette__s baguettes se vendent bien._


And one minor correction more.


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## Lugubert

Hakro said:


> In *Swedish* the equivalent of French "on" or English "one" is "man" and the construction of the sentence is similar.


Correct, and we also use the passive. There is an object case of "man", sometimes dialectally even used for subjects, "en". "Ska en göra detta" 'Are you (!) supposed to do (like) this?'


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## Encolpius

*Hungarian *

there is nothing special in Hungarian --- you can use *3rd person plural* of the verb without any pronoun -- you can use the noun "az ember" [the man] --- using passive is used usually in official style --- you can use the 2nd singular or 1st plural form of the verb as well --- you can use simple infinite....


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## ger4

I'd like to add Russian even though it isn't my native language - but it strikes me that very often a Russian 3rd person plural verb (with the pronoun omitted) expresses something like an action performed by an 'impersonal' (undefined) actor and can correspond to a German construction with _man_ (~ French _on_): 

Улицу расширили и дома сломали. 
Ulicu rasshirili i doma slomali.
lit. They have broadened the street and pulled down the houses.
(1) Sie haben die Straße verbreitert und die Häuser abgerissen.
(2) Man hat die Straße verbreitert und die Häuser abgerissen.
(3) Die Straße ist verbreitert (worden) und die Häuser sind abgerissen worden.

(1) is a very literal translation. It is possible but seems to have negative connotations, somehow* 
(2) the form with man is more neutral and more commonly used
(3) the passive form is possible as well

* expressing something like 'they did it without even asking us'

----
In this phrase the 3rd person plural verb (without a pronoun) probably had some kind of an 'impersonal' meaning as well before it became an idiomatic expression (I may be wrong, of course):  

Меня зовут...
Menya zovut...
lit. They call me...
= I'm called..., my name is... 
German: Ich heiße...


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## bibax

In Czech we also commonly use the reflexive personal pronoun *se* (in accusative).

Impersonal sentence:

Ici on parle francais.
Zde _*se*_ mluví francouzsky. = ... _*se*_ habla ...

Sometimes the literal translation must sound humorous for the English ears:

V Číně _*se*_ jedí psi. = lit. In China the dogs eat _*themselves*_.
Psi _*se*_ jedí s česnekem. = lit. The dogs eat *themselves* with garlic.

The meaning is passive. The poor dogs are eaten, of course.

The form *se* is short (unstressed, enclitic). If we want to say that the dogs really eat themseves, we use the long stressed form *sebe*, usually with the pronoun sám/sama/samo (ipse/ipsa/ipsum).

Psi jedí *sami sebe*. = Canes edunt *se ipsos*.


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## Gavril

In Welsh, verbs have a special passive/impersonal form, usually ending in -*ir* (in the present indicative):

_Siared*ir* Saesneg yn Lloegr_ "English is spoken in England"

In the imperfect indicative, this suffix becomes -*id*:

_Siaredid Lladin ar y gyntaf yn yr Eidal_ "Latin was originally spoken in Italy"

And in the preterite, it is -*wyd*:

_Gorchfygwyd Prydain gan y Rhufeiniaid_ "Britain was conquered by the Romans"


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## Dymn

Outsider said:


> Catalan does have *om*, which seems to work pretty much as _on_.



Well, in fact it is spelled _hom_, as it stems from _home_ 'man'. However, its use is mainly literary and archaic. The colloquial way to deal with this kind of pronoun is with _es _(or _s' _before vowel), which corresponds to Spanish _se_.


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## 123xyz

In Macedonian, like in other Slavic languages, the French "on" and the English "one" are best translated with the impersonal passive (or reflexive), or much less commonly, with the third person plural, with no explicit subject.

Examples:

Чајот се пие со шеќер - One drinks tea with sugar
Тука не се пуши - One does not smoke here
Тука се зборува исклучиво на англиски - One speaks exclusively in English here

Curiously enough, this impersonal passive has started to be used as an active form, mostly for the first person singular and plural, albeit only in the scope of slang, much like "on" is used in French. So:

Каде ќе се оди? - Where will one go? (Where will we go?)
Вечер ќе се учи руски - Tonight one will study Russian (Tonight I will study Russian)
Што ќе се јаде во ресторанот? - What will one eat in the restaurant? (What are we going to eat in the restaurant?)


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