Grammatical construction of, "...nous étions parties"Hi,
I had written, "... nous étions partis" in lieu of the recommended, "... nous étions parties". I don't understand the recommendation:
So "étions" as auxiliary "être" in imperfect (indicative) tense, 1st person plural, added to the past participle "parti" so as to construct the compound past perfect tense.
I constructed the past particle as male gender plural so, "partis". This as we have two assumed female genders (Joséphine and the writer Amélie) as well as at least one other, gender unknown, as expressed through the larger sentence, "... et avec laquelle nous étions parties".
I thought the rule for French grammar was, choose the male gender when the gender is unknown...l don't want to support patriarchy. I do want to get my grammar straight. Thanks!
Hi,
I had written, "... nous étions partis" in lieu of the recommended, "... nous étions parties". I don't understand the recommendation:
So "étions" as auxiliary "être" in imperfect (indicative) tense, 1st person plural, added to the past participle "parti" so as to construct the compound past perfect tense.
I constructed the past particle as male gender plural so, "partis". This as we have two assumed female genders (Joséphine and the writer Amélie) as well as at least one other, gender unknown, as expressed through the larger sentence, "... et avec laquelle nous étions parties".
I thought the rule for French grammar was, choose the male gender when the gender is unknown...l don't want to support patriarchy. I do want to get my grammar straight. Thanks!
Why is there no de with this sentence? J'espère ne pas faire d'erreurs.
I hope not to make a mistake.When I was young... I use etais but to say he was promoted you don't say il etait promu but il a ete promu and I don't understand why you use this and not the imperfect. Please explain! I can't add accents on this so forgive me they are missing
Je pourrais certainement OBTENIR UN rendez-vous. BUT Je pourrais certainement PRENDRE rendez-vous. ?? No article with prendre.
Or is it contextual/optional.
From the lesson «When talking about two actions that happen simultaneously, you will use :
en + Participe présent / Gérondif»; can you not also use imparfait and passé composé eg Je courait quand j'ai rencontré Mathilde ? I am not suggesting the same meaning or English translation, but the sentence still describes the simultaneous occurrence of events, that could also be described using le gérondif. If that is correct, the quote from the lesson should replace 'will use' with 'can use' (and preferably reference the lesson on passé composé and imparfait being used together as another). If there are reasons to choose one over the other, worth noting as well.
A bit confused.. just taken a test and this question..
Write "I am in front of the school." : "Je suis ________ l'école."
I used “en face de” which is marked as incorrect. Devant certainly works but why is en face de wrong? Linguee is happy with it!
I haven't had an answer to my query re Chris' explanation, I last wrote ' The English version of this sentence is 'By the time he packed' so the answer should be 'ait fait' or the english should be 'by the time he packs' in which case the french should be ' she will already be gone' ' I now have a further query about 'By the time you were ready, the bus had already gone'. Surely 'By the time you were ready' is in the past? Is this an example of the difficulty of translating English into French? Do we not have an equivalent tense?
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