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Help please

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thecreeker:
I've been struggling a bit with si clauses and the use of the plus-que parfait lately, so I would love some help with sentence structure

"Si mon père n’étais pas allé à l’étrange pour travaille,  nous aurions quatre personnes chez moi."

I mean to say "If my dad had not gone over seas for work, we would have four people in my house"

I badly hashed this up so some help would be awesome

MonsieurHulot:
You've used the plus-que-parfait (almost) perfectly here, good job for remembering aller is conjugated with être. For the second part of the clause, you need to use the conditional past (être/avoir conjugated + past participle).
You're on the right track, you followed the above structure in the first half of your sentence, there are just a few other issues.

"Si mon père n’étais pas allé à l’étrange pour travaille, nous aurions (needs past participle) quatre personnes chez moi."

The third person singular of être at the imperfect is "était", not "étais".
"étrange" isn't a noun, it's only an adjective, meaning strange. "l'étranger" is what you need (overseas, abroad etc.)
Concerning "travaille", it's not incorrect but it doesn't sound natural. Use the infinitive "travailler" wherever possible.
Also, "nous aurions" isn't technically incorrect but I think that "il y a" is more common and sounds better.

This is how I would say it:

Si mon père n'était pas allé à l'étranger pour travailler, il y aurait eu quatre personnes chez moi.

thecreeker:
Merci beaucoup :)
I didn't know it was preferable to use travailler over travaille, appreciate that :)

MonsieurHulot:
De rien.
The infinitive sounds more natural and is more common amongst natives when compared to using a noun that expresses the same idea.
Bonne chance dans l'examen !

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