# FR: It (thing) is warmer than I thought



## johnL

Bonjour, tout le monde.
This sentence is not referring to the weather, it's about, say, an object that you touch or pick up. My initial thought was to say it like this:
_Il est plus chaud que j'ai pensé._
But then I wondered if it should be:
_Il est plus chaud que ce que j'ai pensé._
Thanks in advance.


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## fiso34

_il est plus chaud que je ne l'avait pensé._


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## Micia93

if you speak of an object, you can just say : "* c'*est plus chaud que j'aurais cru"

:=)


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## johnL

Micia93 said:


> if you speak of an object, you can just say : "* c'*est plus chaud que j'aurais cru"
> 
> :=)


Well, I'm confused.  My first thought was to use "c'est" rather than "il est" but the standard textbook teaching is that you use "c'est" if you're _identifying_ something (C'est mon père.) and "il est" if you're _describing_ something (chaud).


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## Micia93

no ! "c'est" describes *something*
of course, you can also say "c'est" applied to a person, but only in your example : "c'est mon père"
if you say : "il est chaud" we will understand you're speaking of a hot guy !


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## Micia93

Yes of course Moon Palace, but I think "il" here is impersonal, and has nothing to do with the 3rd person singular 
and Jon didn't speak of the weather 
what do you think ?


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## Moon Palace

Of course, there is no particular person at stake, _il fait_ is the same as _il faut que... _They are called _sujet grammatical_ (grammatical subjects) because they don't refer to a real subject, it is just the way we speak about the weather: _il pleut, il neige, il fait beau... 
__C'est chaud_ would refer to a particular object, as when you speak about a dish you have just served: _attention, c'est chaud_ meaning that either the food or the dish itself is hot.


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## Mikebo

Moon Palace

Faut relire la question de JohnL: il dit qu'il ne s'agit pas du temps: "This sentence is *not* referring to the weather".


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## Moon Palace

Mikebo said:


> Moon Palace
> 
> Faut relire la question de JohnL: il dit qu'il ne s'agit pas du temps: "This sentence is *not* referring to the weather".



You are absolutely right, Mikebo . And I am sorry for overlooking that small _not_ which fundamentally changes the meaning. My earnest apologies.  Yet, it is such a common mistake for learners of French (and the same goes for _there is_ for learners in English by the way), that I forgot to concentrate on the issue at stake. 

So, to recap what I have said on the question: 
_c'est / cela est _(in a more formal register)_ plus chaud que je ne l'aurais cru / pensé_ is indeed what I would say when talking about an object. As Micia pointed out earlier, you will not use _il _because this would precisely refer to a person, not to an object. 

Edit: I agree with geostan and itka's next post: if the object is previously mentioned and if there is no ambiguity regarding what _il _refers to, then of course you can use "_il est plus chaud..."_. Sorry again for the confusion, my engine seems to have failed to launch itself...


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## geostan

I think we're confusing JohnL.

Let's take a specific sentence:

Michel a commencé à soulever le couvercle de la casserole, mais _*il était plus chaud qu'il ne l'avait cru*_ et il l'a laissé tomber.

There is nothing wrong with using "il" to refer to couvercle.
As with any pronoun, there must be a reference to a noun, which would make the meaning of the pronoun clear.


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## itka

I completely agree with geostan. That's what I was thinking too.
JohnL says : 


> it's about, say, an object that you touch or pick up.


...and the sentence geostan offers is perfect in that case.


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## johnL

Well, it looks like the question of c'est/il est is resolved, but I still have 2 questions:
1) Everybody seems agreed that the verb should be passé conditionnel, which I interpret as "It's warmer than I would have thought." That's about speculation. (In other words, I haven't touched it yet, but based on the fact that it just came out of the freezer, I _would have thought_ that it would be cold.) But it seems that passé composé (which I used) _could_ also be valid, just with a different meaning: "It's warmer than I thought; I touched it just a moment ago, and it didn't seem that warm." So this is based on previous experience, not speculation.
So I'm wondering if there is a definite reason why you all automatically used passé conditionnel after I used passé composé. Maybe it's a question of context? I thought I gave adequate context but it was actually pretty vague.

2) Why the negation? It seems that you're saying, "It's warmer than I would *not* have thought." That's really hard to wrap my AE brain around!

Thanks for all the input, this is very helpful


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## Fred_C

Hi,
The only reason why everyone used the conditional is because they were influenced by the first two offputting replies.

What you must use is not the compound past tense, but the imperfect.

C'est/il est/elle est plus chaud (chaude) que je pensais.

This is a typical case of using the imperfect, because your thinking is a long action suddenly interrupted by the short action of your realising that it is warmer.
(Use the imperfect when an action is longer than another)


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## Moon Palace

The reason why there is a lot of confusion here is that we have been drifting away from the original question, and as I have already said, I take my share of this. 

Now, _It is warmer than I thought_ should be _Il est plus chaud que je ne le croyais / pensais. _There is no conditional in the original sentence, and no need for one in French either. 

Sometimes you can say _It is warmer than I would have thought, _and in this case there are two solutions: 
either we consider that this is another way of saying _it is warmer than I thought_, in which case the imperfect will be befitting here too; or we consider (in a literary context for instance) that there is a purpose for the use of the past conditional, and we will say in French _Il est plus chaud que je ne l'aurais cru / pensé_. This in French belongs to a very formal register. 

As for the presence of _ne_ in the latter case, it is due to the conditional, and it does not have the meaning of a negation since there is no _pas. _It is what we call _un "ne" explétif_, and only stresses the fact that the action considered does not belong to the reality. We also use it in such phrases as _je crains qu'il ne_ + subjunctive_, _again because after _je crains que, _we consider an action that is not in the reality. 

Regarding the question on the _passé composé_, it cannot be used in this sentence because this tense has the value of result: _j'ai acheté une voiture_ means I now have a car, exactly like the present perfect. So it would not be coherent here to speak of a result of a past thought when we are actually saying that this thought was mistaken in the first place. 

I hope I have been clear and to the point this time. I have tried to make up for my first mistake in this thread.


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## geostan

Moon Palace said:


> As for the presence of _ne_ in the latter case, it is due to the conditional, and it does not have the meaning of a negation since there is no _pas. _It is what we call _un "ne" explétif_, and only stresses the fact that the action considered does not belong to the reality. We also use it in such phrases as _je crains qu'il ne_ + subjunctive_, _again because after _je crains que, _we consider an action that is not in the reality.



The expletive ne is due to the *comparativ*e, not to the *conditional*.

Il est *plus grand* que je _*ne*_ (le) croyais. There is no conditional here, but the *ne* is still used.


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## Moon Palace

You're right again, geostan. This was decidedly not the right thread for me today.


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## johnL

This is all great info. Thanks to everyone for their contributions.


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