French language Q&A Forum

An acronym that I like to use is BANGS, which stands for beauty, age, numbers, good/bad, and size.

Adjective relating to these categories usually come before the noun. If you compare this to the list of adjective in the lesson above, you'll see a lot of them fit. 

Bonjour.

re. mal vs mauvais/mauvaise: Is the adverb "mal" used as an adjective with the copular verb être, to say "bad"?

For example, to say "good", do we only use the adjective of "good" with être (a copular verb): "Pierre est bon. C'est un bon homme." But, when saying "bad" instead of "good" with être, do we use "mal" (adverb) instead of mauvais to say "He is bad",  but use "mauvais" when a noun is present? : "Il est mal. C'est un mauvais homme." 

I find this topic confusing.

Cheryl

Hi,

In a context outside these lessons, I was asked to put the following sentence in la voix passive:

"Le conducteur n'a pas pu arrêter le train à temps."

I thought it would be straightforward and answered as follows:

"Le train n'a pas été pu arrêter à temps par le conducteur."

But this was marked as false, with the correct answer being:

"Le train n'a pas pu être arrêter à temps par le conducteur."

I don't believe the use of la voix passive with modal verbs (pouvoir, devoir, vouloir) was covered explicitly in this lesson, so I wanted to ask if you could please explain these rules, since it seems they might differ from the rules presented here.

thanks, Scott