English Translation
I’m surprised you didn’t know that.
Should be subjunctive because of surprise: Je suis surpris que tu l’aies ignoré.
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There are two notable things about this sentence:
- The author is sacredceltic.
- It’s been translated to other languages by people that are either native speakers of French (martinod, a Belgian) or very good at French (marafon, a Russian), without raising any concerns.
I don’t know what conclusions to draw from that, though.
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I’m not sure what that means either. sacredceltic has done a lot of work on the French sentences, but I’m not sure of the quality of his work. It is good for learning vocabulary and he uses idioms in a nice way at times. It seems almost every time I find a grammar error, it is his work. So I’m not sure what that means.
I don’t know if the errors that I find are important in every day conversation? Many speakers of English don’t know grammar that well or care…
Lawless French webpage says that “être surpris” requires subjunctive. (https://www.lawlessfrench.com/subjunctivisor/etre-surpris/)
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It’s really “être surpris que/qu’” + subject + verb which calls for the subjunctive.
About the French translation - I feel like we wouldn’t use “cela” in this kind of constructions:
- I’m surprised you don’t/didn’t know that
→ Je suis surpris que vous ne le sachiez pas. (polite or plural you)
→ Je suis surpris que tu ne le saches pas.
I would probably use the present tense in both cases in French.
- Another way to express the same idea:
Je suis surpris que vous ne soyez pas au courant.
Je suis surpris que tu ne sois pas au courant.
Être au courant means to know, to be aware of something. It is commonly used, especially in spoken French.
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