Le moment quand - French Mistake

French mistakes analyzed and explained

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". However, "when" in this type of construction is a relative pronoun, and 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.

Quand, on the other hand, 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.

Related lessons: Relative pronouns | Interrogative adverbs | Conjunctions