Imparfait and passé composé

Question

I'm struggling to choose between the imparfait and the passé composé for a sentence like "I had a grandfather who passed away because his surgery was a failure".

I know we're supposed to use imparfait for continuous actions in the past and for descriptions in the past but I don't know if saying his surgery was a failure is a description. So my attempt is:

J'ai eu un grand-père qui est décédé parce que sa chirurgie était un échec.

Answer 1

Contrary to LPH, I don't see a problem with "J'ai un grand-père qui..."

Here are a couple of examples taken from a Google Books search:

• Je suis assez fier d'avoir un grand-père qui est mort de la goutte.
• Il paraît que c'est très grave d'avoir un grand-père qui montait au cocotier.

I think this kind of construction, "Il y a un X qui..." or "J'ai un X qui...", tends to be much more common in speech than using "Un X..." or "Un de mes X..." as the subject of a sentence. In formal writing, there's a tendency to prefer the second construction, but I don't think it makes the first kind wrong.

With that being said, I think francophones are more likely to say "J'ai un grand-père qui est décédé..." than "J'ai eu un grand-père qui est décédé...".

In your sentence, many speakers might prefer "sa chirurgie avait été un échec" to match the timeline, but I think "a été un échec" or "était un échec" are absolutely things you might hear. Of these two, the passé composé seems the more likely because you're talking about the result of the surgery, but I also think "était" is possible.

Edit: There are some comments to the effect that opération is required instead of chirurgie. A Google search yielded the following examples taken from websites of hospitals and clinics in France and Canada:

• La nourriture : avoir de bonnes habitudes alimentaires favorise les résultats de votre chirurgie.
• Vous n'avez pas besoin de passer la nuit à la clinique avant ou après votre chirurgie.
• En fonction de votre chirurgie, votre anesthésiste pourra vous...
• L'Hôpital d'Ottawa lance aujourd'hui une nouvelle section dans son site Web qui aidera les patients à se préparer pour leur chirurgie.

Edit: Here are some additional examples from Google Books.

• Toutefois, il est clair qu'une chirurgie réussie commence par une bonne indication.
• Les avantages potentiels de la PRG sont une recherche facilitée des parathyroïdes agrandies, la réduction du temps opératoire, l'identification du tissu parathyroïdien ectopique, une baisse de l'utilisation d'examen extemporané et de l'ioPTH, et la vérification d'une chirurgie réussie.
• Même si certains enfants semblent faire appel à d'énormes capacités adaptatives, force nous est de constater qu'après une chirurgie réussie, les relations...
• Une chirurgie réussie améliore la qualité de vie des patients.

Edit: I found this Google Ngram search revealing. The use of chirurgie to mean opération seems to have begun in the 1960s, and it appears that, as of 2019, chirurgie had become about one-sixth as common as opération. This may be a case where reference works have failed to catch up with usage. Based on the views jlliagre has expressed, it is fair to assume that some people find this usage odd or unacceptable, even though it may not be infrequent.

Answer 2

Here is a couple of ways to say "I had a grandfather who passed away because his surgery was a failure" in French:

J'ai un grand-père qui est mort à la suite d'une opération¹ qui a échoué.

Mon grand-père (maternel/paternel) est mort après une opération qui a échoué.

J'ai eu un grand-père... (passé composé) is not inconceivable but much less natural than the present tense.

Similarly, j'avais un grand-père... (imparfait) is unlikely to be used because being your grand-father is a status that expires not with his death but with you own death so you would say:

J'ai un grand-père qui est mort d'un arrêt du cœur. Mon grand-père avait aussi un grand-père qui est/était mort d'un arrêt du cœur

English uses to pass away to politely avoid to die. We have similar expressions in French like nous a quitté, a perdu la vie and s'est éteint.

Should you want a formal sentence, you might say :

Mon grand-père nous a quitté après une opération qui a échoué.

I wouldn't use est décédé here because while it also avoids using mourir, décéder is lacking empathy and therefore more suitable for paperworks, forms or tables.

¹ _{If you use chirurgie for "surgery" when the latter means the work done by a surgeon and not the branch of medicine related to such works, you'll be understood but raise eyebrows in France, where this usage is not listed in dictionaries and very rare (I personally never heard it.) I'm pretty sure that if you use that translation in an assignment, it would considered a mistake by the corrector. This wouldn't be the case in Québec where this acceptation is documented (OQLF). In France, the usual translations are opération and intervention with chirurgicale appended when the context doesn't make it implicit.}

Answer 3

• J'ai eu un grand-père qui est décédé parce que sa chirurgie était un échec.

In French, you wouldn't say "avoir un grand-père"; it is not idiomatic and it goes against a certain logic of the verb/context. One would normally say "mon grand-père" or, if careful, "mon grand-père paternel" or "mon grand-père maternel". For the sake of using a verb, let's say that this man is not known to the the person asking about him; we can then write this;

• C'était mon grand-père et il est décédé parce que son opération chirurgicale a été un échec.

You use the "imparfait" for "être" (c'était) because the state of being perdured in the past, and you use the "passé composé" for the other two verbs because those actions are one time actions in the past (Lingolia).

Note: You can't say "chirurgie" to mean "opération chirurgicale" (which you abbreviate to "opération" when there is no possible confusion).