Le moment quand - French Mistake

Mistakes will always be made in French, and now you can learn from them.

Wrong: Le moment quand

Right: Le moment où

Explanation: If you look up "when" in an English-French dictionary, the first translation you'll see is quand. So it makes sense that when you're saying something like "that was the moment when I realized," you want to translate it as "c'était le moment quand je me suis rendu compte." The problem is that "when" in this type of construction is a relative pronoun, but quand can only be an interrogative adverb, as in "When are you leaving?" - Quand vas-tu partir ?, or a conjunction, as in "You can eat when you arrive" - Tu peux manger quand tu arriveras.

The French relative pronoun that means "when" is où (which also means "where"). So "that was the moment when I realized" and "the day when I left" are properly translated into French as c'était le moment où je me suis rendu compte and le jour où je suis parti.

Related French lessons

• Relative pronouns
• Interrogative adverbs
• Conjunctions