"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...?"
Why is it "Bien qu'il soit actuellement l'astronaute français le plus célèbre...", and not "Bien que ce soit actuellement l'astronaute français le plus célèbre..." ? I thought that you have to use "c'est" (and not "il est") with a noun that has an article and an adjective.
Is there a lesson about the verbes d'état on kwiziq?
It was stated in the questions that a lesson about it was added to to-do-list but I couldn't find one.
Thanks a lot.
Bonjour! Je me demande pourquoi on dit "d'especes" et non pas "des especes" dans cette phrase?
Merci!
In the lesson re the Cyclades, I left off des and was marked wrong. In the lesson notes, it states that using de after se rappeler is optional. It’s required if one uses se souvenir. So what is correct? Thanks.
OK, after ten minutes of work I *think* I finally found the answer in 2b (it might have been 2a — I can’t look while typing this) of "C'est" vs "Il/Elle est" to say it is/she is/he is in French
My question was how to decide between ce and elle. I *think* the answer is that this is a general statement of opinion. It would be nice if the first answer marked with the green checkmark as a correct answer were the one that contains a link to the lesson/article including this information. Actually it would be nice if that answer contained links to the other related articles as well.
Note that the first answer marked with the green checkmark is NOT correct. More accurately, it is ONLY correct if one encounters this question in the context of a lesson. When one encounters the question as part of a « Test Now » set of ten questions for level A1 (as I did, of course) there is no lesson context to tell you to use ce instead of ça. That wasn’t my problem, but it was not helpful to encounter that « correct answer » while trying to solve my issue.
what are the meaning of jusque-la?
Do I use it in present tense,past tense and future tense ? and does it have two meaning? (until then,So far)
Examples:
1-Mon fils était un brave garçon jusque-là= My son was a good boy until then
2-C'est mon moment préféré jusque-là=it is my favourite moment so far
3-Les reste de cadeaux attendra jusque-la=The rest of the gifts wait until then
Aidez-moi S'il vous plait
I have noticed that all the phrases use the pronouns, "le or la". As in:
"La fille dont le frere travaillait avec moi..."
"Francois, dont j'ai rencontre la femme..."
Is there any problem with saying the following for example?:
"La fille, dont son frere travaillait avec moi, a gagne le prix"
"La femme, dont son fils j'ai rencontre la semaine derniere..."
"Amelie, dont ses enfants sont venus chez nous, sont bien eleves"
I know that se sentir and aller identical. But in this exercise it does not work.
Franck________ en pleine forme.
Answer: se sent
Franck va en pleine forme. It is false. I wonder why it is incorrect?
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...?"
Why is it “de la pâté à modeler” and not “des pâté à modeler”?
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