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I have heard the following sentence in the TV series Marseille:

Je te pardonnerai jamais ça.

The English subtitle translation is "I will never forgive you". What does "ça" mean here? I considered that it could mean "for that", but I think that "I will never forgive you for that" would be expressed as "Je te le pardonnerai jamais".

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  • Note that in French, just like In english, pardonner can be used either with no direct complement, or with a direct complement. Je (ne) te pardonnerai jamais is also correct, there is a just a little nuance (you then don't mention the act for which you will never forgive the person, so this feeling of "unforgiveness" is deeper and more personal).
    – Greg
    Apr 21, 2020 at 15:12

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Your are right considering "for that" as a translation for ça.

The meaning is the same between:

Je te pardonnerai jamais ça. (pronounced either J'te pardonnerai... or Je t'pardonnerai...)

and

Je te le pardonnerai jamais. (pronounced either J'te l'pardonnerai... or Je t'le pardonnerai...)

The first sentence is putting more emphasis on the pronoun. An even more emphatic sentence would be:

Ça, je te le pardonnerai jamais.

Formal/literary/school French would use:

Je ne te pardonnerai jamais cela.

I believe Spanish has very similar constructions:

Nunca te perdonaré eso.

and

Nunca te lo perdonaré.

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  • I'm not a native Spanish speaker, but AFAIK the more usual construction would be "Nunca te lo perdonaré" and the less usual alternative would be "Nunca te perdonaré por eso". Also the most usual sentence in Portuguese ("Nunca te perdoarei por isso") requires the preposition "por".
    – Alan Evangelista
    Apr 16, 2020 at 14:16
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    I see. There is however no preposition in the well known perdona nuestras ofensas | perdoa-nos as nossas dívidas (French: pardonnez-nous nos offenses).
    – jlliagre
    Apr 16, 2020 at 14:43
  • @jiliagre True. AFAIK the correct usages in Spanish are "perdonar algo", "perdonar a alguién" and "perdonar a alguién por algo". Same in Portuguese with "perdoar".
    – Alan Evangelista
    Apr 16, 2020 at 15:27

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