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Questions answered by our learning community with help from expert French teachers
14,795 questions • 32,059 answers • 984,255 learners
(I'm afraid I can't remember the French question, but this was how I read it in English.)Why is this in the subjunctive? It seems to me to be a fact that the obligation is not needed. Thanks for the explanation.
In terms of translating into French, it seems that the two phrases above are equivalent in meaning. All the examples use a construction in English that is correct but not necessarily how people would say it. It would be quite normal and grammatically correct to say the simpler phrase, "I just ate my breakfast." Would someone ever use the passe compose in the "venir de + infinitive", and if so, what does it mean in English? I expect that the venir in the pluperfect + infinitive would mean "I HAD just [done something]."
"J'aurais une grande maison si j'en avais les moyens"
Why is the imparfait "avais" used here? "Could" is conditional, so why are we not using "pourrais" here?
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