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I'm learning French from Alice Ayel's video series, and as an exercise to the last lecture that I watch, I want to say that

Me too when I went to İzmir, which is a city in Turkey.

I wrote

Moi aussi alors que Je allé a İzmir, qui est une ville dans Torque.

However, when I translate it in google translate, it gives a weird output in Turkish, but exactly the same sentence I gave above when I translate it in English, so my question is that is the sentence grammatical & meaningfully correct ?

1 Answer 1

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There are a few things to change:

  1. Your verb is in the passé composé, which is good. However, this tense requires an auxiliary. In the case of aller, the auxiliary is être. Conjugate être for je in the present, and you get suis.

    Moi aussi alors que je suis allé à İzmir

    Why? Because French makes heavy use of compound tenses (temps composés). Many of the times and aspects we want to express are not possible or not common with simple tenses consisting of one verb. The compound tenses use one or more auxiliary (être, avoir) and/or modal (aller) verbs to yield the complete meaning. But you still translate such phrases as one word in English (suis allé ~ went), and especially in Turkish, where verbs are affixed instead.

    For more, read about isolating (Mandarin), fusional (French) and agglutinative (Turkish).


  1. The French name for the country is not Torque, but la Turquie. Also, the preposition for feminine countries is usually en (often directional) or de (often possessive). Here, jlliagre suggests de.

    Moi aussi alors que je suis allé à İzmir, qui est une ville de Turquie.


  1. Instead of alors que, you can use quand. Although "when" is one of the senses of alors que, according to jlliagre it more often means "despite" (or I might read "whereas").

    Moi aussi quand je suis allé à İzmir, qui est une ville de Turquie.

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  • Thanks for your answer @Luke. I used "dans" as preposition "to".
    – Our
    Commented Jan 24, 2019 at 6:30
  • Also, since the first sentence has a verb, 'alle ', why do we need a "to be" ver there ?
    – Our
    Commented Jan 24, 2019 at 6:31
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    Plutôt : Moi aussi quand je suis allé à İzmir qui est une ville de Turquie.
    – jlliagre
    Commented Jan 24, 2019 at 9:23
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    Nowadays, alors que is much more likely to mean Mee too despite the fact I went to Izmir.
    – jlliagre
    Commented Jan 24, 2019 at 14:29
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    On pourrait aussi encore améliorer la phrase en supprimant qui est qui est inutile: Moi aussi quand je suis allé à İzmir, une ville de Turquie.
    – jlliagre
    Commented Jan 25, 2019 at 0:24

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