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Questions answered by our learning community with help from expert French teachers
14,731 questions • 31,906 answers • 973,521 learners
All our lives, we'll have wanted to be together. Some things are simply not meant to be.(HINT: Conjugate "vouloir" in Le Futur Antérieur)aurons vouluavions vouluserons voulusaurions voulu
I was taking one of the B1 tests and came across this problem. Could you please explain.
For "Do you know what happened?" I was marked wrong for "Savez-vous qu'est-ce qui s'est passé ?"
Only "Savez-vous ce qui s'est passé ?" is accepted. I feel my answer should be accepted.
I know that typically, retourner is used to mean "to go back" and rendre is used to mean "to give back." But on this page: https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/auxiliary-verbs-2/ , which discusses using variable auxiliary verbs in the passé composé, it mentions that retourner can also be used transitively and in that case, it changes its meaning to "to give back." So in the passé composé, can retourner be used in the same way that rendre is?
For example, would both of these be correct?
1. J'ai rendu le livre à la bibliothèque.
2. J'ai retourné le livre à la bibliothèque.
The phrase 'which seemed to have been left there' is translated as 'qui semblaient avoir été laissées là'.
Could you also translate it using 'y' rather than 'là' (and if so, where would the 'y' go ?) ?
Vraiment?
Ce festin s'accompagne de patates, de jambon et de cornichons
Would there be anything wrong with saying 'Nous n'avons pas du tout été déçus' ?
I thought arrière was an invariable adjective...?
For a change of pace I decided to use seulement instead of ne...que for the following sentence:
"J'ai eu deux chats." . Write "I had only two cats.": ________ deux chats. My answer J'ai au seulement deux chats... was marked wrong! I understand Chris' response to another use that the focus of the exercise in ne que..but in many of the tests (choose ALL the correct answers) they had both the 'seulement' version and the 'ne que' version as GOOD answers.
Unless my answer has an error which I am overlooking ,or there is a point of grammar why seulement is unacceptable here, I would like to suggest a revision of the test marking to accept seulement.
There may be sound reason why learning to use seulement is beneficial, even if 'ne que' is considered better in formal writing. Based on further reading, I have found that SEULEMENT ALSO can VARY IN PLACEMENT ..to differently focus the restriction. Rules for seulement: Cannot be placed BEFORE the conjugated auxiliary/ does not have to be placed (unlike many adverbs) IMMEDIEATELY after the conjugated verb/can be placed just like the 'que' before the 'target word ' being restricted.
So it seems : I had ONLY two cats= je n'ai eu que deux chats OR J'ai eu seulement deux chats.
I ONLY had two cats == Je n'ai qu'eu deux chats or J'ai seulement eu deux chats.
As usual I stand ready to be corrected!
When do I use j'ai or je suis because they both mean the same thing so I don't know when's the time to use which I have
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