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Came across this sentence in Astérix and had no idea what it meant. The main character, Astérix, says "J'aimerais bien une bonne bagarre," and his friend Obélix responds "Faut pas trop y compter."

What does his response mean?

Stéphane Gimenez
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temporary_user_name
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4 Answers4

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The y is for “il y a une bonne bagarre”, the compter is “to count on” with the nuance of anticipation, prevoir in french.

Therefore : You should not count on it (on any good bagarre).

Stéphane Gimenez
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oldergod
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    I'm sorry, I still don't follow. Is faut short for Il faut... ? I don't know what it means at the beginning of a sentence on its own. You've perfectly explained the y compter, but I actually don't understand Faut pas trop either. – temporary_user_name Dec 07 '15 at 07:42
  • I would have interpreted your question the same way oldergod did – GAM PUB Dec 07 '15 at 08:11
  • @Aerovistae: yes, "faut" is a shortcut of "il faut", here. Happens a lot in spoken french (which the BD (Bande Dessinée) describes) (note: I use "Happens" instead of "It happens", as an illustration of the same kind of shortcuts in English common langage ^^) – Olivier Dulac Dec 07 '15 at 12:28
  • @GAMPUB that makes no sense. There should be no interpreting going on, I asked about one sentence and only half of that sentence was explained. How does it make sense to "interpret" my confusion as only pertaining to the y compter? – temporary_user_name Dec 07 '15 at 16:11
  • @GAMPUB moreover you then went on to answer my question perfectly so I'm especially confused. – temporary_user_name Dec 07 '15 at 16:16
  • @Aerovistae Sorry, it was the way I understood it as I read it the first time. My bad, then... – GAM PUB Dec 07 '15 at 16:29
  • @Aerovistae Sorry, I did not explain the first part of it because it seemed to be it would be something you would know as for (1) the difference of difficulty with the latter part of the sentence is rather large, and (2) that "faut pas" would be something already learned if you were reading something as Asterix. I see you got others answering it for you anyway. – oldergod Dec 07 '15 at 23:58
  • I do a lot of reading and have very little exposure to casual speech so sometimes I am thrown by oral-style shorthand, like the omission of il. I would recognize y'a but faut was new. I didn't want to assume it was short for Il ne faut pas when it might have been some idiom I was unfamiliar with. – temporary_user_name Dec 08 '15 at 00:18
6

Faut pas trop y compter is a shortcut for

Il ne faut pas trop compter là-dessus.

faut is third person of the defective verb falloir.

This translates:

One shouldn't count too much on it.

or

One shouldn't rely too much on it.

Stéphane Gimenez
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jlliagre
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6

So two things in your question:

  1. faut is a standard truncation for il faut, a necessity modality marker; in this context => you shouldn't
  2. y compter stands for compter sur ça => count on it

Dropping the impersonal il happens with other verbs:

  • faire: fait froid, fait suer, ...
  • y avoir: y a rien, y a pas photo, ...

But not all, with meteo verbs, it's not common to drop the pronoun:

  • il pleut => [iplø] but not [plø]
GAM PUB
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6

"Faut pas trop y compter" has a simple correspondence to English:

  • "Faut pas" - must not
  • "trop" -- too much
  • "y" -- may depend on context but in this case, 'on it' or 'on that', i.e. "what you just said"
  • "compter" -- count

So "Must not count on it too much".

More idiomatically,

  • I'd really like a good fight
  • "[you or we] Can't count on that!" or "You'd better not count on that too much", implying, "That good fight you're counting on might not happen"
ChrisW
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