6.8 At the doctor's and at the pharmacy — Epoché
What you will be able to do Say that something hurts, using the one construction that covers almost every part of the body, building on the form you met in 5.1. Name the four or five symptoms that account for most visits to a doctor, and say how long you have had them. Understand the two instructions a doctor will give you during an examination. Get medicine over a pharmacy counter, with or without a prescription, and know which of the two you need. Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English J'ai mal. [1] I am in pain. J'ai mal ici. [2] I'm in pain here. Prerequisites : 6.7 and 5.1 — you need the telephone lesson because you will ring the surgery before you go, and the words for the body and for health, because this lesson gives you the construction and assumes you can name the part. See 6.7 Conversation and 5.1 Vocabulary if either is missing. This is the one scene in the volume where being vague costs you something. In a shop a half-understood sentence gets you the wrong cheese; in a consulting room it gets you the wrong advice. The good news is that the language is narrow: one construction, about eight nouns, and two instructions cover almost everything you will need to say or hear. The construction is the interesting part, and it is interesting because of what it leaves out. English cannot talk about a pain without saying whose body it is in. French can, and normally does. Who is speaking to whom A doctor and a pharmacist are both addressed with the formal form, and both will use it back to you. That is true even of a young doctor and even in a country practice where everybody knows everybody; the consulting room is a professional space and the pronoun marks it. There is one asymmetry worth knowing. A doctor may use the familiar form with a child, and with a patient they have known for thirty years, and neither of those licenses you to do the same. If you are uncertain, notice that the doctor's questions in the tables below come in both forms: the formal ones are what you will hear, and the familiar ones are what a parent hears about a child. Produce only the formal. The title matters here too. A doctor is greeted with a title of their own rather than with the ordinary one, and you will hear it used as a form of address with no name attached, exactly like the titles you met in the first lesson of this volume. How English does it English puts a possessive on the body part; French puts the definite article. This is the application in conversation of the construction you met in 5.1. English says my head hurts or I have a pain in my back , and the possessive is obligatory: the head hurts is not English. French says the equivalent of I have pain at the head , with the plain definite article, because the sentence has already said whose head it is — the person who has the pain. Putting a possessive in is one of the most audible mistakes an English speaker makes in French, and it happens in exactly this construction. English uses a verb; French uses the verb for having plus a noun. It hurts is a verb in English. The French construction is the verb meaning to have, then a noun meaning pain or harm, then a preposition, then the article and the part. Nothing in it is a verb of hurting. This is the third place in this volume where French treats a state as a thing possessed, after age and after the delay of a train, and by now you should expect it. English contracts nothing here; French contracts the preposition with the article, and the contraction depends on the gender and on the first sound of the noun. The preposition joins the definite article and comes out as one word for a masculine part beginning with a consonant, another for a plural, and stays separate for a feminine one. Before a vowel there is no contraction either way: the article is elided instead, as in à l'œil . That is why you must know the gender of the body part before you can complain about it, and it is the one real piece of grammar in the lesson. English asks how long have you had it with a perfect; French asks with a present. French treats a condition that is still going on as present, because it is: the question is literally since when do you have it . An English speaker who reaches for a past tense here will be understood and will sound odd. English pharmacies sell common medications like paracetamol without a prescription; French ones sell less of these without a prescription. The practical consequence is that the sentence about buying something without a prescription is one you will hear rather than say, and usually in the negative. A French pharmacist is a trained professional who will also examine a rash and give advice, which is why the counter conversation is longer than an English speaker expects. The construction, with the contractions French English Note J'ai mal. [1] I am in pain. the bare construction: a verb of having plus a noun J'ai mal ici. [2] I'm in pain here. the same with an adverb, and no part named J'ai mal au dos. [3] I have a pain in my back. a masculine part: the preposition and the article are one word J'ai mal au ventre. [4] I have a stomach ache. another masculine part, the same contraction J'ai mal au cou. [5] My neck is sore. and another; the English gloss uses a possessive, the French does not As-tu mal à la tête ? [6] Do you have a headache? a feminine part: the preposition stays separate J'ai mal aux dents. [7] I have a toothache. a plural part: a third form of the contraction J'ai mal partout. [8] I'm sore all over. no part at all, and an adverb doing the work Docteur, j'ai mal au dos. [9] Doctor, my back hurts. with the doctor's title in front, as you would say it Read the English glosses of rows three to seven of the table "The construction, with the contractions" and count the possessives. Two of the five have my in them, and the others avoid it only by using a compound such as stomach ache or toothache ; not on