#frenchbraids

One complex concept in French is sentence structure and articles - there are a lot of tiny differences from English which, well... makes the difference when trying to sound natural. A very telling example is the way we express getting hurt or injured.

English: “My head hurts.”

French: “J’ai mal à la tête.” (lit. ’I’m hurting at the head’)

Basically, in English, the main actor of ‘getting hurt’ is that one part of the body; in French, we are the main actors, our whole person is the one hurting, at a specific part of our body.

Since we’re already mentioning ourselves, we don’t need to specify “my head”. Which is why the article in front of what’s hurting is always a definite (or indefinite) article.

Tu as mal à la tête ? Tu devrais prendre un Doliprane si ça continue.

Your head’s hurting? You should take Doliprane if it doesn’t go away.

J’ai mal au coeur quand je vois ce qui leur est arrivé.

My heart hurts when I see what happened to them.

Elles avaient mal à l’estomac à cause du repas de la veille.