French language Q&A Forum

HI,

I forget what lesson in A1 I saw this and now I can't find it. But one sentence has c'est un Vieux sac for it's an old bag but the second one is c'est un vieil home for he's an old man. My question is why is c'est for he is or she is shouldn't it be il/Elle est?

Thanks

Nicole

In this sentence, I cannot hear the "d'œil"

Le vétérinaire a jeté un coup d'œil rapide à sa patte,

The English translation "I'm washing after you got up" is grammatically incorrect. You're essentially saying "I'm doing this after you did that", which makes no sense in English. The proper structure would be "I'm washing after you get up" (I'm doing this after you do that") or "I'm washing after you have gotten up" ("I'm doing this after you have done that").

This is one of the most frustrating things in studying any language, when you see a direct translation given that you know is grammatically incorrect (even if it is understandable by somebody who's fluent in the language that the sentence is being translated into) instead of a transliteration that makes more sense.

Why do we use the past participle "occupés" after "semblaient" in the third sentence. Why isn't it in the infinitive "occuper"?

Yet your explanation says to use "jouons au" for a sport that you play regularly. "We play waterpolo" means we play it regularly. That's an unambiguous English sentence. There is no other way to translate that. No English-speaking person would use the phrase "We play" for a single incident. They'd say, "We're playing waterpolo." This seems like a bug to me. 

Even the article you link to earlier in this discussion uses "jouons au" for waterpolo. Either you need to explain this better or change the quiz answer.

ETA: In fact, if you type "We play water polo" into Google translate, it says "Nous jouons au water polo." If you google "jouer à vs faire de" you get this explanation:

To remember when to use each verb: if the sport involves a ball, use jouer. If not, use faire.

Someone brought this up 3 years ago. You updated the lesson 2 months ago. This should've been addressed already.

What is a pronoun, i cant see it here?

In the line “The second page seemed almost identical to the previous one” the answers do not contain a word for “almost”, such as “presque”. Is this intentional, or should the answers be corrected?

For reference, the answers are: (i) La seconde page avait l'air identique à la précédente, (ii) La deuxième page avait l'air identique à la précédente, (iii) La deuxième image paraissait identique à la précédente, (iv) La deuxième page semblait identique à la précédente. 

Thanks, Brian

Never sure about this one. I use ‘sortir’ when I’m leaving a house, for instance, but how does one ‘go out of’ a town? Seems to me that the examples using ‘partir’ and ‘quitter’ are the only correct ones, depending on context.