Do you ever hear about French construction après avoir fait? This construction is often used in French, so let’s find out if it has an equivalent in English and in which situation it is used.
Construction and Use : après avoir fait
Construction après avoir fait is translated in English with syntagm “before doing it”. It’s used for describing an action that occurred before the second action in a complex sentence.
Je passerai la serpillière après avoir fait la vaisselle.
I will mop the floor after doing the dishes.
As we can see in the example, the first action is doing the dishes and the second one is mopping the floor. ( First I will do the dishes and after that, I will mop the floor). Briefly, the position of the verb in a sentence doesn’t show her temporal advantage.
If you wish to renew your knowledge on the French preposition, read the article Common French Mistakes : Après, Avant, Derrière, Devant.
Usage
- Après avoir fait is used with an action that happened in past or to announce an intention in the future.
Après avoir fini mon travail, je commencerai mes révisions.
After finishing my work, I will start studying for my exam.
- Après avoir fait + noun, a sentence which expresses an intention to do a thing or some consequence.
Après avoir fait mes exercices, je vais regarder la série. (action habituelle)
After I finish my exercise, I will watch the serie. (a routine action)
Elles sont serbes de Novi Sad, mais ont séjourné à Paris après avoir fait leurs études à Moscou et avant de venir vivre à Zagreb.
They are Serbian from Novi Sad, but they stayed in Paris after they finished their studies in Moscow, and before they came to live in Zagreb.
Take care that In French, we consider that after + [verbe] always refers to an event in the past, occurring before the moment of speech. Therefore, in English, you may say ‘after doing that,’ but in French, you may not say ‘après faire ça‘!
Après avoir fait l’analyse, assurez-vous que vous avez une solution de sécurité pour protéger votre PC.
After finishing the analyses, assure yourself that you have a solution for security to protect your PC.
It’s very important to notice that when you’re using verbe avoir preceded by an object pronoun (après l’avoir vu/e), you need to agree the past participle with the object referred to by the object pronoun!
The clause after doing doesn’t have a specific subject that goes with her, so the subject will come before or after this little clause. In that case, we can say:
Luc est allé à la gym après avoir fait le ménage.
Luc went to the gym after he cleaned the house.
Or, in second option:
Après avoir fait le ménage, Luc est allé à la gym.
After cleaning the house Luc went to the gym.
In both cases, no matter which clause comes first the action that is introduced after doing ( something) happens first.
Now, instead of the verb “faire”, you can actually use any past participle. Make sure you check this video to see how.
Read this article for more examples.
Pronunciation
Regarding pronunciation for English speakers, it’s very important to signify that the liaison between après and avoir is indispensable. In some parts of France bonding between those two words is optional, but you will agree that liaison sounds more elegant and more French.
To Wrap Up
Slowly, we`re finishing this lesson. Hope that explanations and a bunch of examples helped you to figure out this specific grammatical construction.
Be free to read the lesson a few times and exercise it several times over!