French language Q&A Forum

Would the past subjunctive have been incorrect in the phrase "before Belinda suggested"?  I translated the phrase as "avant que Belinda n'ait suggéré".

In 1990 L'Académie française produced a document changing the spelling of certain verbs, and I quote:

5. Verbes en -eler et -eter L’emploi du e accent grave pour noter le son « e ouvert » dans les verbes en -eler et en -eter est étendu à tous les verbes de ce type. On conjugue donc, sur le modèle de peler et d’acheter : elle ruissèle, elle ruissèlera, j’époussète, j’étiquète, il époussètera, il étiquètera. On ne fait exception que pour appeler (et rappeler) et jeter (et les verbes de sa famille), dont les formes sont les mieux stabilisées dans l’usage.

Should this be reflected on this site?

The idicated translation is "dish."  In English, a dish can either be a plate on which food is placed or it can mean an entree.  I suspect that the meaning of "plat" is the physical plate on which food is served.  Can you verify?

Why is the subjunctive in this case not used with ‘ne'

I'm a bit unsure why it should be 'couples des autres' rather than 'couples d'autres'...

Just as an aside - I find this lesson format (the line by line parsing of the little story) really great from a learning perspective!

I presume there is some simple reason but it would seem that nouveau would normally go first?

Bonjour,

Just want to ask why there is "le" in this sentence. It translates to english as we can if we want to, so why the le? 

Merci :)

Hello,

I noticed when using the word beaucoup it can also mean very besides to mean a lot. Do you only use beaucoup with the preposition de after it to mean very? For example Elle a beaucoup de la chance au casino.

Thank you

Nicole

The answer in the quiz was ce jour-là and I was marked wrong for putting cette journée-là. In the lesson it states one should use an rather than année in these expressions. Is it the same rule for jour/journée? If so it might be helpful to add it to the lesson examples. Also is there a general lesson on when to use jour or journée? Thank you.