In today’s lesson we’ll have a look at the commonly used expression rien à voir (or n’avoir rien à voir), which translates literally to “nothing to see” and means “to have nothing to do with” and “to be nothing like”. The origin of this expression is unknown. Interestingly the other Romance languages have exact same expressions: no tener nada que ver in Spanish and niente a che vedere in Italian.
Rien à voir
To have nothing to do with, to be nothing like
Pronunciation [ʀjɛ̃ a vwaʀ]
Example sentences
For this first example, celles is a demonstrative pronoun in the feminine plural form meaning “the ones”. To express a decade, the French use les années + number. For example, the 1960s – les années soixante.
Les voitures modernes n’ont rien à voir avec celles des années cinquante.
Modern cars are nothing like the cars from the 1950s.
This sentence uses the expression être d’accord avec, meaning “to agree with”. Many students confuse this with the interjection “d’accord !”, which means “all right”.
Non ! Je ne suis pas d’accord ! Ça n’a rien a voir !
No! I don’t agree! That has nothing to do with it!
This final sentence uses leur, which means “their”. This is a possessive adjective. Leur is also an object pronoun meaning “them”.
Je n’ai rien à voir avec leur décision stupide.
I have nothing to do with their stupid decision.
Related lessons
Word of the Day archive | Lessons by David Issokson
