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Questions answered by our learning community with help from expert French teachers
14,863 questions • 32,282 answers • 1,001,768 learners
Hello, I'm aware of the rules for this case, but the translation was what stopped me from writing this. "Devrais" generally means "should", but that translation doesn't work here. Would this be an exception, then? Thank you.
I know there are lots of exceptions in French! Is there one hiding behind the breaking of the symmetry of taking off two letters and adding one when forming participles (-er > -é, -ir > -i, but -dre > -du, rather than the simpler -re > -u) ?
Why can't it be - "On ne doit pas que penser à soi." ? [One must not only think about oneself.]
And doesn't this translate to - On ne doit pas penser qu'à soi -- "One must not think that about oneself." (because 'penser que' - to think that)
Please explain.
The correct answer is "de crainte que tu ne sois."Why do we use the present subjunctive instead of theimparfait subjunctive or past subjunctive?
"They didn't go to the party for fear that you would be there."In English, I typically hear "out of fear" vs. "for fear."
Why do we pair le passé composé with the present subjunctive?The past action or inaction was in the past and the fear (of you) wasin the past. I submitted "fusses," but that was incorrect. I assumethat "aies été" was incorrect as well.
Is there a time period where you typically use imparfait (more thana day? or a week?) vs. passé composé with être?
As near as I can tell, no transitive usage of DESCENDRE is followed by a preposition, and whenever descendre does take a preposition, it's an intransitive verb. This doesn't tell which of the many meanings of DESCENDRE obtain, but it does seem a reasonable heuristic device. Your thoughts....?
Is there any way of speeding up the audio to something more akin to proper speech?
Regarding the question ?How could you say "You need a new bike." ??
I think "devoir" would be acceptable as I perceived the possibility the person used the bike as a necessary form of transportation and the bike was either to broken to repair or was used for work. In that case they would really need to replace the bike making devoir acceptable.
Or maybe I'm just reading too much into the questionÉ
Plural uncountable noun
les épinardsdesTu manges des épinards.
(You eat some spinach.)This explanation is incorrect. There's no such thing as a plural uncountable noun. The very definition of a non-count noun is that it doesn't take a plural inflection. You need to explain this as a difference between what's a count versus non-count noun between the two languages. "Spinach" is non-count in English but countable in French (hence taking "des."
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