French language Q&A Forum

I haven't had an answer to my query re Chris' explanation, I last wrote ' The English version of this sentence is 'By the time he packed' so the answer should be 'ait fait' or the english should be 'by the time he packs' in which case the french should be  ' she will already be gone' ' I now have a further query about 'By the time you were ready, the bus had already gone'. Surely 'By the time you were ready' is in the past? Is this an example of the difficulty of translating English into French? Do we not have an equivalent tense?

The first words I learned in French were the first words in my very first French textbook: 

J'entre dans la salle de classe. Je regarde autour de moi. 

Thank you for accepting that as an alternative answer.

A French national suggests that DURANT emphasizes the such and such occurs/occurred from the very beginning of the time interval to the very end, while PENDANT does not. This seems to be the difference between "I spent the entire week doing such and such" versus "I did such and such during the week."

If that it is the case, there may be value in adding that to the lesson. I have noticed BTW that DURANT appears in conversations much less that PENDANT, perhaps because of the nuance cited above. 

Is another translation of this: Il a abattu le parrain? My French dictionary gives the definition of abattre as `to shoot down ` or `to kill` Is there a nuance?

Bonjour ! Vous pouvez m'aider à trouver les verbes qui sont toujours avec des pronoms toniques. Je connais quelques verbes (penser à /songer à /s'intéresser à) mais je ne peux pas trouver une complète liste ! Ou une façon de reconnaître ces verbes... 

Hi, for “but I used to play it all the time when I was a teenager” we are given the answer “mais j'y jouais tout le temps lorsque j'étais adolescente”. 

I had put “mais je le jouais…”. What’s a good way to interpret why it should be “y” and not “le”?

Thanks, Brian