He had more experience than I did

Question

'He had more experience than I did'is translated as ' Il avait plus d'experience que moi' I think that should be a translation of ' He had more experience than me'. Whereas 'Il avait plus d'experience que j'avais' which may not be grammatical or good french (is it? )but does not convert 'than I did', to 'than me'. This kind of approximation in translation whilst necessary in real life is not helpful in the learning process as we are having to guess at what you want .

Susan Barr · Accepted Answer

I think the reason is explained in the "tip"(provided in the lesson) which states that one always uses a stress pronoun after "plus/moins/autant de quelque chose que" (so moi, toi, lui/elle etc instead of je, tu, il, etc) and that the verb is never repeated (so one exludes the "have"/"had"/"do"/did").  Thus, the translation that "Il avait plus d'experience que moi" seems correct.

Maarten Kamp · Answer

Agree with Susan - the point of the lesson is that, when comparing nouns, regardless of whether in English we say 'than me' or 'than I (did/have/had) etc',  it is 'que moi . . . ' in French, and a French construct that uses a subject pronoun with the verb repeated is incorrect. There is no guessing involved as far as I can see, as there isn't a second correct answer to consider.