Question

If you wanted to say:

I miss you.

Would it be correct to say?

Je te manque.

Answer

No! That is incorrect.

It is perfectly reasonable to think this. With most of French, the subject/verb word order matches English. I (je) miss (manque). However, for this particular phrase, the person or thing missed is in the position of the subject and the person doing the missing is in the position of direct object. The correct way to say this is.

Tu me manques.

Notice, the verb manquer agrees with the person missed. Since it is 'you' we use the second person singular conjugation.

In a certain sense, you could translate the sentence as 'you are being missed by me.'

There is no obvious reason this phrase differs from the word order in most French sentences. It is just the way it is. C'est la vie!

Examples

Je leur manque. (They miss me)

Ils nous manquent. (You miss them. Notice, in this case, we use nous for you.)

Tu nous manques. (We miss you)