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14,862 questions • 32,299 answers • 1,003,541 learners
Questions answered by our learning community with help from expert French teachers
14,862 questions • 32,299 answers • 1,003,541 learners
I used “Évidemment” instead of “Bien sûr” for the term “Of course”, and it was not included as any of the accepted terms. Could you please explain the appropriate use of “évidemment”? Several dictionaries translate it as “of course”, but perhaps there is a usage nuance that I do not understand?
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"Je mange des algues et je nage souvent avec les poissons." There both indefinite and definite articles in this sentence. Why not, "Je mange les algues et je nage souvent avec les poissons," or "Je mange des algues et je nage souvent avec des poissons?" And also, "J'aime bien aussi collectionner les coquillages." Why not, "J'aime bien aussi collectionner des coquillages?"
In English there may be a difference in meaning between "You went out even though I wasn't ok with it" and "You went out even though I'm not ok with it"; I might have changed my mind in the interim: "You went out even though I wasn't ok with it [, but now I am ok with it]." Wouldn't this second sense require the imperfect rather than the subjunctive in modern French: "... bien que je n'étais pas d'accord"?
You point out that in English we don't tend to use the 'some' that is necessary in French, but then in your examples, you translate all the sentences using some/any. eg 'I eat some jam', 'he buys some bread', 'do you want some potatoes?' etc. In the quiz we are not told we can choose multiple answers so going by the law of averages we assume that 'Jane eats some ice cream' must be the correct answer where in fact you then say that is only 'nearly' right and 'Jane eats ice cream' is what you want. I would have chosen the right answer had you not persistently translated your examples with 'some'! Perhaps you should either bracket all the 'somes' or allow for both answers to be right?
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