# FR: Ce à quoi tu penses, c'est son avenir



## toy

Hello ,

Could you help please explain what does this sentence mean ?

How do we use ce a quoi ?

Ce à quoi tu penses, c'est son avenir.

Thank you


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## geostan

_What you're thinking about is his future.

_One may also say_:  Ce à quoi tu penses, c'est à son avenir._


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## snarkhunter

toy said:


> Ce à quoi tu penses, c'est son avenir.


You're perfectly right!

It's only a way of putting the "COD" before the subjet/verb.

Your sentence : "Ce à quoi tu penses, c'est son avenir."
is the same as "Tu penses à son avenir.",
only stressing what you are thinking about,
rather than the fact you are thinking about something.

In other words : "Ce à quoi + subject + verb + ..." = "subject + verb + à + ..."

Another example :
"Moi, ce que je dis, c'est que tu as eu tort." (= "Moi, je dis que tu as eu tort.")



geostan said:


> One may also say_: Ce à quoi tu penses, c'est à son avenir._


Sorry, but I do not agree. Though not absolutely wrong, it is still not perfect.

It would sound much better as "Ce à quoi tu penses, c'est son avenir.",
because there is no actual need to duplicate "à".

Put the other way round, we would have "C'est *à* son avenir *que* tu penses."... and still only one "à"!


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## geostan

snarkhunter said:


> It would sound much better as "Ce à quoi tu penses, c'est son avenir.", because there is no actual need to duplicate "à".
> Put the other way round, we would have "C'est *à* son avenir *que* tu penses."... and still only one "à"!


On the contrary, the duplication of the a shows a careful regard for the construction with _penser_. As far as I am concerned, either form is equally correct, although I will admit that speakers are more likely to use the form without the duplication.


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## toy

Hi ,

Thank you so much for all your explaination . I am trying to understand .


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## Tabernero

Hi, I know I'm late, but I wanted to ask:

Would it be possible to use _ce auquel_ here? 

Or can the auquel/à laquelle only be used with celui/celle?

eg _Ce n'est pas celui auquel tu penses/celle à laquelle tu penses.

_ Must it always be _ce à quoi_ here? It just sounds a bit interrogative to me. I'm probably wrong.


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## mylaine

Hi. Celui auquel/celle à laquelle tu penses...ce sont des individus, essentiellement, ou quelque chose de précis


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## Tabernero

What about _ce auquel_​? Does that exist haha?


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## mylaine

non, c'est carrément incorrect

mais cela peut sembler rigolo


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## L'Inconnu

I'm not saying the original sentence is wrong, but I consider including <ce> and <c'est> to be superfluous. More succinct is: 

"À quoi tu pense est son avenir."
"What you're thinking about is his future."

I take it the French prefer a certain _redundancy_ to make the sentence more emphatic.  Compare

"C'est quoi ça?'' to ''Qu'est-ce c'est que ça?''


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## mylaine

et , les ados aiment..."quoi que c'est, ça??
  Je préfère vos versions!


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## CapnPrep

L'Inconnu said:


> More succinct is:
> 
> "À quoi tu pense est son avenir."


More succint, yes, but ungrammatical. If you really want to, you can omit the second _ce_ (_Ce à quoi tu penses c'est son avenir_), but the first one is neither superfluous/redundant nor emphatic. It is simply required by the syntax.


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## L'Inconnu

CapnPrep said:


> More succint, yes, but ungrammatical. It is simply required by the syntax.



I should have said that <ce> and <c'est> are superfluous from an English speaker's perspective. The French sentence I wrote contains all the elements I need to make a complete coherent sentence in English. Allowing for the fact that we have different modes of the present, the only adjustment I needed was to change the position of the preposition <à>/<about>.

À = about
Quoi = what
Tu pense = you're thinking
Est = is
Son = his
Avenir = future


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## ride7359

I think more is really there, even in English.  "That which/the thing that" is the "what" of your sentence.  "What" has different forms in French for its function in a sentence.  Here you have a non-specific thing - no gender or number - and it has no antecedent.  It therefore needs the "ce" to function as the pronoun with no antecedent.  An equivalent sentence without a preposition would be, for example:

Ce que nous voulons, c'est sa réponse.     

The preposition changes the "que" to "quoi."


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