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Questions answered by our learning community with help from expert French teachers
14,865 questions • 32,305 answers • 1,003,832 learners
To emphasise that a (recurring) action in the past has now stopped happening with depuis, you can also use Présent indicatif with ne ... plus (not any more) instead of ne ... pas. Here ne...plus focuses on the change between the past situation and the new current one, which it highlights, hence Le Présent.
Tu ne bois plus d'alcool depuis cinq ans.You haven't drunk alcohol for five years.Je ne fume plus depuis 1998.I haven't smoked since 1998.I am confused about these examples. I understand the structure and they seem to be more or less interchangeable, but I want to understand the difference. The qualifier makes sense, to indicate that the action has now stopped, but the examples don't seem to illustrate that.
How do those English sentences indicate that an action has now stopped occurring? "I haven't drunk alcohol for five years" -- termination began five years ago when I stopped drinking. Does it mean that the term of the five years has just completed?
But then, if so, with "je ne fume plus depuis 1998," we don't even have a defined term, it's that year to the assumed present and the stopping smoking happened in 1998.
I really want to understand so thanks in advance for any clarification!
In the sentence starting, "L'année dernière, j'ai découvert . . .," isn't "last year" referring to a unit of time that happened once, so wouldn't "l'an dernier" be correct? I thought "l'année dernière" would indicate that the discovery happened multiple times over the course of a year. Please advise.
I.e. something like "They sent us to you" or "He sent you to me"
What is the correct order, or is there no way to correctly order the pronouns in such a case?
"ils nous vous envient" vs "ils vous nous envient"
"ils me t'envie" vs "ils te m'envie"
Je suis une sage-femme, je rencontre mes clients à la réception et ensuite nous allons dans la salle d’examen, est-ce que je pourrais dire " allons-y" ?
This subject prompted a memory game taught to me at school regarding the “pronoun” order before the verb : me , te, se, nous, vous / le, la, les / lui, leur / y, en - before verb
We learned it like parrots and it has been useful.
If the rule is ne...pas +passe compose +depuis longtemps means not in a long time, surely Martin n'est pas arrive depuis longtemps would translate as Martin hasn't been here in a long time, not Martin hasn't been here long?
On the quiz, I was given Je ________ un jouet! and put voudrais in the blank. It was marked incorrect and veux given as the correct answer. I though you could use either. Why was voudrais wrong?
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