Talk:ne

This is tiny, but just doing some italian homework I noticed,

Ne ho sentito parlare. — “I have heard of it.”

is the parlare really necessary?

isn't simply:

"Ne ho sentito" more correct?

-of it- -I have- -heard-

as I said, tiny, and perhaps I have misunderstood, I'm not going to risk putting my foot in it for something so small, but if anyone agrees that it may be misleading, then It might be worth changing it.

"Ne ho sentito parlare" - is better translated as "I have heard tell of it" or "I have heard people talk of it". I have adjusted the example. SemperBlotto 11:37, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Beware of literal translations. "Ne ho sentito" translates "I have heard of it" word for word, but is not what is used in Italian. "Ne ho sentito parlare" is the idiomatic translation of "I have heard tell of it" or "I have heard of it", that is, it is the phrase that is used in Italian. "Ne ho sentito" means "I have felt/heard/smelt/tasted/listened to some of it/them", so might be a reply to "Have you heard Verdi's music?", or "Have you smelt all of the flowers?" (although more idiomatic translations might be "Ne ho sentito un po'" ("I have heard a little of it") or "Ne ho sentito alcuni" ("I have smelt a few of them")). &mdash; Paul G 06:18, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

ne: French
The pronunciation of ne is given as /nø/. This is completely incorrect. (To make sure I was not incorrect, I checked the French Wiktionary; it agreed with me.) The pronunciation of ne is /nə/. However, I can see where the confusion would arise; to an English speaker, to home /ə/ is an allophone and /ø/ is totally foreign. I have heard american speakers who will mix the sounds, and whose /ǝ/ comes out as ʌ/ø, as to them /ǝ/ only exists as a reduced vowel and can be difficult for non-native speakers of French to distinguish some of these sounds. I am, per the policy be bold, changing the pronunciation to the correct /nǝ/.


 * You were right in making this change. However, the phonems /ə/ and /ø/ have merged in most accents of French. Therefore the transcription /nø/ is not completely incorrect. It's just based on more everyday, or if you will: careless, accents rather than what is traditionally correct. At any rate, it has nothing to do with English people pronouncing French wrong. Though they do, indeed. Kolmiel (talk) 21:40, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

ne:Finnish
The inflection paragraph says: "Comitative niin is more or less a theoretical construction" but in the inflection table 'niin' appears as the instructive. Which is correct?

RFD discussion: May 2013–April 2014
rfd-sense: (in grammatically negative comparative clauses that express superlatives) not (usually translated with the positive sense of the subsequent negative)

Which is as clear as mud, but if you look at the usage example it makes sense:

le gâteau le plus grand que je n’ai jamais vu — “the biggest cake that I have ever seen”

Except that ne is an error in this case, it should be « que j'aie jamais vu ». I have found a couple of hits for it used this way on Google Books, so am not sending this to rfv. Argument is that it's a rare error and only hear because a non-native speaker added it, probably because of the association between 'jamais' and 'ne'. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I disagree a bit. I think it's an error only inasmuch as the verb should be in the subjunctive. Some examples I posted in the Tea Room:
 * Ajoutez que Marguerite était revenue de ce voyage plus belle qu'elle n’avait jamais été. – Alexandre Dumas, La Dame aux camélias.
 * Singer décrit ce film comme le plus ambitieux et le plus grand qu'il n’ait jamais fait. here
 * J'avais eu un réel coup de cœur pour cette émission, notamment pour le décor, le plus grand que je n’aie jamais vu sur un plateau de télévision. here.
 * However, I don't necessarily object to deleting it because I think this is probably not different from the preceding sense. Ƿidsiþ 19:06, 10 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep. The discussion above is incorrect because the entry in question deals with ne without a negative word. You don’t need the subjunctive mood in a comparison.
 * [//www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=%22plus+grand+qu%27on+ne+peut%22 plus grand qu'on ne peut]
 * [//www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=%22plus+grand+qu%27on+ne+puisse%22 plus grand qu'on ne puisse]
 * [//www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=%22plus+grand+qu%27on+ne+croit%22 plus grand qu'on ne croit]
 * [//www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=%22plus+grand+qu%27on+ne+croie%22 plus grand qu'on ne croie]
 * — T AKASUGI Shinji (talk) 08:10, 4 February 2014 (UTC)


 * (French student here, and the ne is a ne expletif. You can also find similar phrase in English, "they'll learn much more than I'll never know". Note that it is non-standard form in English but acceptable in French. --kc_kennylau (talk) 08:17, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Kept for lack of consensus to delete. bd2412 T 13:20, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

The audio for the Dutch word is wrong, it's supposed to be /nə/, but the audio says /ne:/, which belongs to the word nee.