# Nous nous sommes bien amusés



## freehappybird

Hello everyone,

I hope you are doing well.


Is this sentence correct in French? If not how should I say it?

*Nous nous sommes bien amusés*


Thank you

Cheers,
Jimmy


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## exegete

[*Nous nous sommes bien amusés*

Your sentence is correct.


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## frodon

Correct indeed


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## freehappybird

Thank you all for the prompt response.

But what does it mean exactly in English and why nous appears twice?

Thank you again

Cheers,
Jimmy


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## konungursvia

"We amused ourselves very much" is what it means, one nous is we, the other is ourselves.


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## freehappybird

Thank you all for your help

You are the best

Cheers,
Jimmy


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## Langers

I am new to this forum. I wondered if there is a translation in english for nous nous sommes? The entire sentence is nous nous sommes bien amuses ensemble. Thankyou for your help.


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## PatLegrand

Bonsoir,
Maybe : we have fun together.


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## jann

Welcome, Langers! 

_Nous nous sommes bien amus*é*s ensemble._


> Maybe : we have *had* fun together.


The first _nous_ is the subject of the sentence = we
The infinitive of the verb "to have fun" is _s'amuser_.   Really it's like "to amuse oneself."  So when you conjugate this for "we" = _nous_, you need to add in the "ourselves," which is the second _nous__.
_Finally, reflexive verbs are conjugated with _être_ in the _passé composé,_ which is why you have _sommes_ + the past participle.

You can see the complete conjugation here:  s'amuser. I hope it helps!

PS.  Please remember that accents are required in French.  If you have trouble typing them on your keyboard, you'll find some helpful information in our sticky.  Several methods are listed, so if the first one isn't convenient for you, just scroll down. 

Jann
Memeber and moderator


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## Langers

Thankyou for your quick reply  It is just confusing why you would not use a single nous but French has many phrases which just do not translate in English.


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## SwissPete

Welcome to the forum Langers.





> French has many phrases which just do not translate in English.


And English has many phrases which just do not translate in French (which makes things very interesting, and this forum popular). 

BTW: _Thank you_ is two words.


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## jann

But there is no need whatsoever for this particular sentence to be confusing, because we have a structure in English that is exactly parallel. 

Compare:

We amuse ourselves.
_Nous nous amusons._

We amused ourselves.
Nous nous sommes amusés.

The first "nous" is the "we" and the second "nous" is the "ourselves," that's all.  Does that help?


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## Langers

Thank you again for your relpy. But originally i wanted to say in english 'we had fun together'. And this was translated for me in french as nous nous sommes bien amuses ensemble (i know i need an accent on e but i cannot do it on my laptop, sorry)
Using ensemble as together i thought would mean you did not have to use the second nous as ourselves.
Thank you again


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## jann

Well, it's just that in French we don't say "to have fun."  If you put the words for "have" and "fun" next to each other in a French sentence, it would be meaningless.  Instead we have a French verb that means "to have fun," but has a structure like the English expression "to amuse oneself."  That verb is _s'amuser_, and this is the verb you need to use if you want to talk about having fun.  If you want to add _ensemble_=together on at the end of the sentence, that's perfectly fine and correct, but it doesn't make any difference at all in determining the right way to use the verb, and you still need both the "we/_nous_" and the "ourselves/_nous_":

We amused ourselves together. = We had fun together.
Nous nous sommes amusés ensemble.

This is just what they say in French when they want to express the idea "We had fun together." My comparison with "we amused ourselves together" was just to help you understand the structure of the sentence, and specifically why the word _nous_ has to be there twice.


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## Langers

Thank you for your very well explained answer  It certainly has helped and makes perfect sense now. I have appreciated the excellent responses and I will look forward to posting again but I just have to master the accents


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## Trendywendy_41

Hello there,
Would one only use one nous if it were "Tony et moi, nous sommes bien amusés? Or Tony et moi, nous nous sommes bien amusés?

Trendy


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## JeanDeSponde

Without the comma for the 1st: _Tony et moi nous sommes bien amusés_.
The 2nd is less formal, and much more common now.


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