Il ne saurait être bon pour toi.

Sentence Discussions French
#1
English Translation

He couldn’t be good for you.

savoir
[pouvoir] to know how to, to be able to
je ne saurais te le dire = I couldn’t tell you
© Larousse 2014

I’ve been struggling with savoir meaning could, can, etc. If anybody has comments about this, I would highly appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

#2

I think a closer English translation would be “He wouldn’t know how to be good for you.”

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#3

This is a nice article on the difference between pouvoir and savoir. I think when I see “can“ I want to use pouvoir, but it isn’t always the right word.

#4

I ended up on this website a few times and I like it, even if I may not agree with 100% of what I read (it’s close).

About the article you linked specifically:

It’s nice to see them mention the following :

image
image893×211 27.1 KB

I can attest to that… This is real.

Other than that, I agree with all their examples, except one:

  • “Je sais parler allemand.”
    → You would definitely be understood if you said that, but it sounds a bit off to me.

If you want to list the languages you can speak, you can simply say:

  • Je parle [insert language(s) here].
  • Je parle anglais.
  • Je parle anglais, allemand et japonais.
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