Are you ready for another opportunity to expand your French vocabulary? For today’s word of the week blog, we’ve chosen the word trop.
To begin with, you’ll need to know how it sounds in French:
Something interesting and perhaps confusing about the word trop is that we don’t always translate it to a single word in English. Depending on the context, trop can translate as too (note that it’s too with the double ‘o’) as well as multiple English words in the expressions too much or too many. But either way in French, you’ll only need the single word trop.
For an overview of the grammar, the main thing to know is that trop is an adverb. However, when using trop in action, you’ll need to know some rules about the word order. You’ll notice in our examples that the placement of trop depends on what else is happening in the sentence:
- When trop goes with an adjective or another adverb, it usually sits before that adjective or other adverb.
- When trop goes with a verb tense that’s just one word, like the present or the imperfect, it usually sits after that verb.
- When trop goes with a verb tense that’s more than one word, like the perfect or pluperfect, it usually sits between the auxiliary verb and the past participle.
With all this fresh in your mind, it’s now time to look at some examples:
trop souvent too often
trop longtemps (for) too long
Mes chiens mangent trop vite. My dogs eat too fast.
J’aimerais bien vous rendre visite mais c’est trop loin. I would really like to visit you but it’s too far away.
« Est-ce que tu veux l’acheter ? » « Non, j’en suis sûre que ça sera trop cher ! » “Do you want to buy it?” “No, I’m sure that it’ll be too expensive!”
Elle est trop sympa ta mère. You mum is so kind/nice.
Nous craignons que notre grand-père fume trop. We’re worried that our grandfather smokes too much.
Tes amis ont trop parlé. Your friends talked too much.
You might also find trop along with other prepositions in expressions that don’t quite fit into the grammar rules we mentioned:
en trop…
C’en est trop ! That’s enough!
J’ai du beurre en trop. I have too much butter.
trop de…
Nous avons bu trop de vin. We drank too much wine.
Ne mets pas trop de sel. Don’t add too much salt.
Il y a quatre chaises de trop. There are four chairs too many.
We hope that this week’s blog wasn’t too difficult to follow – remember, every time you come back here to learn about a new word, your French knowledge will only get better and better. Until next week!
Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
