Veuillez ranger .... attacher vos

Bonjour tout le monde,

The sentence bellow I see as:

(Vous) veuillez ranger …. and so I also expect

(Vous) attachez vos ceintures.

But it ain't so.  Pourquoi pas?

Veuillez ranger votre table en position verticale et attacher vos ceintures

Merci,

Vit Novak

Bonjour Vít,

I hope I have understood your question properly. Are you asking why attacher doesn't appear as attachez? There are two key reasons why.

Veuillez ranger votre table en position verticale et attacher vos ceintures.

We can split this sentence up into 3 parts which should make it easier to see the structure:

1. Veuillez - a polite way of giving a command and can be translated as please. Should be followed by the infinitive (because veuillez is already conjugated).
2. ranger votre table en position verticale - (return your tray to the upright position) note that ranger appears in the infinitive. 
3. et attacher vos ceintures. - (and do your seatbelts up.) Let's just ignore ‘et’ because it is just a conjunction. 

#1 LIST SENTENCES

This sentence is structured with two polite commands 2. ranger… and 3. attacher… and both clauses should have the same structure. It's like a list and in a list, all the listed objects or actions technically should be structured the same (i.e. same tense, all adjectives, all commands, all nouns etc.). Therefore, the first and second commands should be structured the same way.

#2 DIFFERENT LEVELS OF POLITENESS

Another reason why it cannot be ‘attachez’ is because the tone has already been set as polite with the first clause (veuillez ranger vos table en position verticale), therefore to use a simple imperative (attachez) afterwards reads strange because that would be two different levels of courtesy within the same sentence.

I hope this helps and I hope I understood the question properly.

   -   Mitchell

Merci Mitchell,

the explanation is very clear, the situation is simple.  I just did not put the least of effort to understand it myself… the help was too easily available… Bad habit.

V.N.

Bonjour Vít,

No problem whatsoever, that's what we are here for! Sometimes a mental block is hard to get around whether the problem is complicated or easy and I would not want too assume someone is being ‘lazy’ or otherwise.

   -   Mitchell