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Thinking...
Questions answered by our learning community with help from expert French teachers
15,061 questions • 32,714 answers • 1,039,946 learners
I often find it difficult to know whether to use [le/la/les] or [du/de la/des]. I do know the difference, and mostly it's obvious, but sometimes it seems to be optional. Take the case here, at the end of the exercise.... pour jouer aux jeux vidéos, as opposed to ... pour jouer à des jeux vidéo. Any advice please?
I know that typically, retourner is used to mean "to go back" and rendre is used to mean "to give back." But on this page: https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/auxiliary-verbs-2/ , which discusses using variable auxiliary verbs in the passé composé, it mentions that retourner can also be used transitively and in that case, it changes its meaning to "to give back." So in the passé composé, can retourner be used in the same way that rendre is?
For example, would both of these be correct?
1. J'ai rendu le livre à la bibliothèque.
2. J'ai retourné le livre à la bibliothèque.
In the lesson above, the translation is given as "will have been" and "would have been" respectively. How do I distinguish between them in choosing the right translation? Thank you
One of the microkwiz questions I had on this lesson asked you to fill in the blank when talking about "my"... "Mes vêtements...."
.. But the possessive is not covered in this lesson and ive not seen it mentioned so far in what I've studied on lawless. I've been googling for a while now but still confused as to how to conjugate for my/your/their
Thanks
Bonjour à tous !
Yesterday I was chatting with friends and then, I entertained a doubt that I couldn't clear up on my own. Here's the dialogue of two of my friends:
- J’ai aussi acheté des pêches.
- Oui, elles sont très bonnes et populaires
Does it make any sense to ask why "Hanoucca" doesn't use a definite article in order to ease the pronunciation? Is it because the "H" is an "H aspiré"?
One of the sentences was: Je courrai jusqu'à chez moi.
I know it doesn't relate to the future, but why use jusqu'à ?
Thanks!
This is a bit of an indirect question related to this lesson about "aprés avoir fait".
The sentence used in the quiz is: "Lucette changea les draps aprés avoir fait le lit." This got me wondering about "changea" and what verb form it is, why we wouldn't say "Lucette a changé les draps aprés avoir fait le lit." But on further reading I see that this is just the difference between a form used in conversation French (passé composé - which perhaps most learners come across first) vs written French (passé simple - which learners come across later..?)
My other question is whether the sentence should actually read: "Aprés avoir changé les draps, Lucette fis / a fait le let." You change the sheets before making the bed, right?
Why is plus-que-parfait used in this sentence: Après avoir été témoin de la naissance de son poulain, j'avais refusé de les quitter et la fermière m'avait laissé dormir dans l'écurie avec eux.
Doesn't plus-que-parfait suggest that the actions had occurred before something else? Because we're talking about something that happened after the birth, shouldn't it just be passe compose?
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