Today we’ll focus on a simple yet extremely useful French expression: “avoir du mal à”, which means to have difficulty/trouble or to find it hard to do something.
avoir du mal à
to have difficulty doing something
Avoir du mal à grammatical construction
This is how the the expression works: Conjugated form of avoir (to have) + du mal à + infinitive. For example, j’ai du mal à prononcer ce mot (I find it hard to pronounce this word).
Example sentences
This first example sentence makes use of reflexive verbs, which are “to myself verbs” in French.
J’ai du mal à me lever tôt le matin parce que je me couche trop tard.
I have a hard time getting up early in the morning because I go to bed too late.
This second example makes reference to the French -r, which is very difficult for many students.
John a du mal à prononcer le “r” français. C’est trop difficile pour lui.
John struggles to pronounce the French -r. It’s too hard for him.
In this example sentence, the word aiguë (high) has a tréma (dieresis) accent. Normally, the rule for the dieresis is for the two side-by-side vowels to get pronounced. Here, however, aiguë is pronounced [ay-gu].
Sylvie a du mal à chanter la chanson parce que sa voix est trop aiguë.
Sylvie is having difficulty sining the song because her voice is too high.
Nous avons du mal à comprendre pourquoi vous arrivez toujours en retard.
We’re having a hard time understanding why you always arrive late.
Related lessons
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