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Questions answered by our learning community with help from expert French teachers
15,058 questions • 32,711 answers • 1,039,685 learners
What is the differ between notre, no circumflex accent, and nôtre, with accent.
Way back in the dim, distant past when I first started learning French, I think I remember being told that to accept an offer, you say "s'il vous plaît" and to decline, you use 'merci".
Eg.: Voulez-vous un verre de vin? Oui, s'il vous plaît./ Non, merci.
I think we also learnt that if you simply replied "merci", it would be understood as declining the offer.
Is this correct?
Il aura eu froid cet hiver-là. He will have been (had) cold that winter.
Cesser de fumer gets the red line.
On the other hand, « déborder » is suggested as an alternative to « occuper » for 'busy' - « déborder » seems a bit strong for just 'busy'.
This exercise used the imperfect tense of pouvoir to translate the English word, could. The French also use the conditional tense to translate could. I am sometimes confused as to the correct choice when trying to translate could. I searched the library for pouvoir and found lots of lessons regarding various tenses for pouvoir; however, I found none for the imperfect. I am surmising that the use of the imperfect for pouvoir is appropriate in what I call "if I could-then I would" constructions. The if part would take the imperfect of pouvoir. This is distinctive from a simple condition as in "Could you pass me the salt?", which I believe would use the conditional form of pouvoir. I hope you understand my question. I am simply trying to figure out when to use the imperfect form for pouvoir when trying to translate could. Thanks in advance.
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