French language Q&A Forum

How can I determine if I can use the historical past to describe a past event? Does it work effectively for both l'imparfait and le passé composé? For example, to convey the following sentence in French: I was working when the phone rang.

Normally, I would say: La telephone a sonne quand je travaillais

But with a historic past, can I say: La telephone sonna quand je travaillai.

In one of the questions in my former test I shold translate ” your name is Thomas”. So I did ” tu t`apelles Thomas”, but got red mark on that, it should be ”tot`apelles Thomas”. I can´t see that alternative in the lesson about how to sat someones name. Would be good with an explanation on that one.

What's wrong here? I use these tomatoes. These are the last ones.

Can you just use 'Flaques' instead of 'Flaques d'eau'?

Wordreference.com seems to think so.

Why in this sentence are we using past perfect in one part and subjunctive present in the other? For temporal coherence, shouldn't we use the subjunctive past in the second part? 

Also, can we use 'reprimande' in French, instead of remarques, for reprimand in English?

1. Is there any word called 'reprimande' in French denoting the same sense as reprimand in English. 

2.  Le pire était à l'école où l'on m'envoyait dans le bureau du directeur.   In this sentence means they?

3. This sentence is difficult for me to understand: je m'étais calmé avant qu'il ne soit trop tard !

The first part of the sentence is in the plus-que-parfait tense, while the second part is in the subjonctif present tense. Since the past perfect tense is always used to describe a past action that took place before another past action, shouldn't the subjonctif passé here be more appropriate? The English sentence itself illustrates this fact: ... had calmed down ... was

Thank you! Overall, a difficult but good exercise to think about the complex constructions of the sentences.

I don’t understand why it’s « Je vais __dans le______ Merseyside la semaine prochaine. »

Merseyside ends with an « e » so should be feminine and use « en. »

Is there any lesson dedicated here on how to distinguish between:

[période, temps, moment, époque]

They all can indicate time in English, but are translated differently in French.

On a different note, is there a way I can find all the exercises here related to a single topic (for example, relationship), covering from A1 to C1?

Thanks!

For indicating "a relationship soured", can we use s'aigrir or aigrir as verbs?

Please can someone explain why is this sentence in the passé composé instead of the imparfait ?