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What is the capital of Tunisia?

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What is the capital of Tunisia?

The meaning of « te laisser te laisser t’aventurer »

Te laisser simply means to let you. The sentence can be translated as

But I can’t let you venture out to a potentially dangerous place without helping you!

Interesting. The repetition may just be a mistake, but it actually makes sense in some way. Similar examples such as “Je ne te laisserai pas te laisser faire” sound perfectly fine. Se laisser faire, se laisser aller, se laisser surprendre and many other similar expressions are valid clauses which can be used after “je ne te laisserai pas” or “je ne peux pas te laisser”. However, here I would try to avoid “ne peux pas te laisser” if possible, because of this disturbing repetiton.

“Se laisser s’aventurer” (allow oneself to venture) is a little unusual, but why not? So the meaning of the sentence would approximatively be the same as “I cannot let you allow yourself to venture in this place.”

Great question! Probably the best translation of the sentence you shared would be:

All the same, I cannot let you let yourself venture into a potentially dangerous place without helping you!

The second te laisser refers to the one who is allowing himself* to venture. The first te laisser refers to the first person singular not allowing the second person singular to allow himself.

In this case, the implication is that the second person singular already has or should have doubts about his venture, but is allowing himself to venture out anyhow.

*I use the term himself generically: it could be herself as well.

Since you heard this in a conversation, as Papa Poule said above, there might have been a pause between the 2 ‘te laisser’. My interpretation is then that the speaker may have hesitated and started saying ‘I cannot leave you on your own’ (which would correspond to the first ‘te laisser’ and then added the end of the sentence to qualify his thoughts, which would translate to ‘ i cannot let you venture into a potentially dangerous place without helping you’.

I can see three possibilities (the first two mentioned above): it could be a straight mistake ; it could be in a conversation, with the speaker pausing between the two ; it could be in a poem, intentionally repeating to get an alliteration effect on the t’s. But I don’t think it’s a legit construction such as “faire faire” that we saw the other day.

The original sentence: ” te laisser te laisser t’aventurer”. In the English, “let you let yourself” makes sense, but I am not sure about the same in French – maybe it does, but it’s really tordu.

 

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What is the capital of Tunisia?