French language Q&A Forum

HI,

In this workbook I'm practicing in that I brought. I had to translate using inversion and vous if necessary. So the sentence was

When is she arriving in Nantes? I put Quand arrive -t-elle à Nantes but then their answer said I should've used à quelle heure.  

Why should I use à quelle heure instead of quand when the question is asking when?

Thanks

NIcole

hi,

when you guys have this sentence as an example un riche comme cresus homme it was marked wrong is that because it should have something else describing the riche? Also as i'm searching to understand this should i treat these as like the similie and metaphors as we do in english?

thank you

nicole

The "preferred" translation indicates that their son fell asleep "a poings fermes," indicating that he was deeply asleep.  I dispute this -- kids may fall asleep with their fists closed, but not tightly unless they are under severe stress.  I would suggest that a better indication of deep sleep would be the other suggestion - "il dormait profondement."  This is from years of watching a number of sleeping children -- mine and others'.  Just a thought....

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?