French language Q&A Forum

Why are there 9 different types of past tense? NINE?! 🤯 Will even a native speaker really use all those? I give up lol

Please reconsider level of execise. I would suggest rather it is a B2 level because it is considerably easier than the other C1 execises 

Hi, is there anywhere to find lateral translations of French phrases, allong side the usual translations? For example, with lui and leur it would help me to have the 'to...' aswell as the usual English. Thanks.

I suspect the prepositions in this lesson don’t mean the same in US and British English.

As a Brit, I wouldn’t say either stop by or pop by somewhere. Pass by and go past mean the same as each other and don’t imply you stopped or went inside: for that, I’d use "go", "pop" or "drop" "into" or "in to" or another construction like "I went to see Laurent at his house".

So I’m not clear if "Elle est passée chez Laurent" means she went in to see him or went past his house without stopping?

 (Setting aside the usage of "place", as in "Laurent’s place")

Looking at several online translators (I do realise they aren’t reliable!) - prendre seems to be used quite often to express set, ie when a partly liquid or wobbly filling is allowed to become more solid by cooling, baking or resting eg "Retirer du feu et laisser reposer jusqu’à ce qu’elle commence à prendre" or "jusqu’à ce que la crème soit bien prise". Is this a recognised usage?

I tend to get tangled up with possessive "de" but wanted to query why the two capitalised nouns above take de l’ rather than d’? The dog is best friend of "Man" not "a man", and capitalising both nouns implies to me a generalisation or personification: despite that, they don’t seem to be treated as proper nouns in French. 

Why was the subjunctive used for « réunisse » in the first part of the sentence but not for « prend » for the second part?

Bonjour. Dans les propositions sans verbe, comment s'appelle le rôle de pronom tonique ? Par exemple :

" — Qui pourra le faire ? — Moi. "

" — Moi. " est la proposition qui ne contient qu'un mot, mais c'est quand même la proposition, n'est-ce pas ? Donc, est-ce le sujet ou comment ça s'appelle dans ce cas ?

Pardonnez mon français.