"Can I" and "may I" in EnglishBonjour,
I certainly do not know enough of French culture and language to discuss your explanation of French usage, below. However, I disagree that in English, the difference between "may I" and "can I" is that "may I" is more formal. More accurately, "can I" may be informal and in common usage, yes, but it is also often considered abrupt and somewhat impolite, and this is not only by grammar nerds (or oldies) such as I (or grammar nerds like me, to use more idiomatic speech, ha ha).
The grammatical distinctions are obvious, of course ("can" denoting capacity or ability, "may" is conditional, one is granted capacity). One hears often, when someone is ordering in a cafe or bar, "can I get a... ". To many English-speakers, this is grating and impolite. I, for one, hope that "may I have...", does not go out of idiomatic usage (though perhaps that battle is lost and I am just raving...)
Love Lawless French, by the way,
Alice
"In the case of pouvoir, note that je peux becomes irregular in the inverted form: puis-je, in order to ease pronunciation.
This structure is very formal as we stated before, and is usually used to sound particularly polite or even a bit affected: the nearest English equivalent would be to use May I...?"
L’imparfait - what a minefield ! It’s not a question, but i’ve found that when it’s used to express habits or repeated actions more sense is made in the English when ‘would’ is used over ‘used to’ - which indeed you’ve noted in your lesson. This has helped me understand its use in French.
So a sentence like “Je lisais tous les jours” could be translated as “I would / used to read every day”
if show me your hands is tes , why isn't it ta main for raise your hand/
In the lesson on the partitive articles, they are listed as du, de l’, de la and des. When would you use the plural “des?” It seems that with uncountable nouns, you’re always talking about an amount or quantity of something, some sugar, some coffee, etc and would therefore always be singular.
The example is given of something like “Tu achètes des épinards.” Here, “des” is used because “épinards” is a masculine plural noun. Is this the only time you use “des?” Otherwise, it’s really used as an indefinite article?
Thank you for any help!
Bonjour,
I certainly do not know enough of French culture and language to discuss your explanation of French usage, below. However, I disagree that in English, the difference between "may I" and "can I" is that "may I" is more formal. More accurately, "can I" may be informal and in common usage, yes, but it is also often considered abrupt and somewhat impolite, and this is not only by grammar nerds (or oldies) such as I (or grammar nerds like me, to use more idiomatic speech, ha ha).
The grammatical distinctions are obvious, of course ("can" denoting capacity or ability, "may" is conditional, one is granted capacity). One hears often, when someone is ordering in a cafe or bar, "can I get a... ". To many English-speakers, this is grating and impolite. I, for one, hope that "may I have...", does not go out of idiomatic usage (though perhaps that battle is lost and I am just raving...)
Love Lawless French, by the way,
Alice
"In the case of pouvoir, note that je peux becomes irregular in the inverted form: puis-je, in order to ease pronunciation.This structure is very formal as we stated before, and is usually used to sound particularly polite or even a bit affected: the nearest English equivalent would be to use May I...?"
Monsieur Dupont, vous vous êtes trompé.
Why do you use être here instead of avoir. Shouldn't it be 'avez'?
The system says the above phrase translates to 'How did she get it wrong?' - but I couldn't work out where the 'it' is. I thought it might mean 'How did she go wrong?' then checked Google Translate, which confirmed my interpretation.
Could this please be checked? Thanks (loving the site by the way)
Pauline
I thought that in french, nouns must always have direct or indirect articles. But in the last sentence of this exercice, "cuillère et fourchette" aren't given any.
In paragraph two of the transcript this sentence: 'Matisse rompt avec les règles...' is translated in the pop-up as 'Matisse broke the rules..' I assume this is a fixed construction? Is that exactly what it means or does it mean (as the French indicates with 'avec) that he broke with the accepted rules of the day. In English 'broke the rules' and 'broke with the rules' are not identical. I'm trying to find out if this is the case in French as well. Thanks.
For the "Je ne regarde pas non plus le télé" vs. "Je ne regarde pas le télé non plus", does one mean "I [like you] also don't watch tv" and the other mean "I don't watch tv either [in addition to another activity]"?
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