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Questions answered by our learning community with help from expert French teachers
14,865 questions • 32,305 answers • 1,003,841 learners
for translating the phrase, "who had been waiting for the snow...the correct answer used the imparfait. Wouldn't that be translated as was waiting? (Rather than had been waiting)
This is a very academic point. The translation for "Ils redoutent qu'elle ne revienne" is given as "They dread she might come back". In French, they dread that she will return. In the given English translation, even the possibility that she will come back is a cause for dread. I know that, in common speech, the distinction might never be made, but shouldn't the equivalent sentences be as follows?
"Ils redoutent qu'elle ne revienne." = "They dread she will come back."
"Ils redoutent qu'elle ne puisse revenir." = "They dread she might come back."
The problem is that this lesson just makes the general statement that adjectives that end in -s, double the s and add e for the feminine, whereas the accompanying video states that most adjectives ending in -s, follow the standard rules except for those listed by OP, which take -sse ending, and 2 others that absous, dissous - which both drop -s and take -te, and tiers which drops -s and takes -ce. There may be a problem in the video description of those that are regular (ambiguous I think) but neither does this lesson note that there are exceptions to the -sse structure.
In my readings of french, I come across this expression frequently, but it seems to have several different meanings. I would appreciate a lesson on the many different meanings for "à peine".
Thanks!
I am confused by
Tu auras dû renoncer à ton rêve.
You will have had to give up your dream. or. You should have given up on your dreamThis lesson would (will) be much more understandable when it includes (or at least highlights) one example clearly identifying «le futur anterieur» event has occurred before some other event. There is one described in the Q and A example Cécile gives below «Nous vous téléphonerons quand nous serons arrivés = We'll call you when we get there», and some, but not all of the examples above. Many of the examples depend on an implicit, or poorly defined time sequence. With at least one well-defined example - in the lesson, not in another reference, not in the Q and A (a section which is often a mess to navigate through and too easy to miss things in - and noting that the other examples should be interpreted to include similar 'past of the future/future' pairs, this lesson would be considerably improved, in my view.
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