French language Q&A Forum

Unlike some comment leavers on this page, I *adore* the passé simple and I find it extremely useful.

That probably has a lot to do with the fact that I enjoy reading French history and literature. (For example, Les Trois mousquetaires is an amazing romp !  Much better in the original French than in any English translation that I've seen.)

I would be hopelessly confused in my reading without a solid understanding of the passé simple (to say nothing of the passé antérieur and *all* the tenses of the subjonctif) !

Different people learn French for different purposes. All the purposes are legitimate, in my view. It's a pretty big website, and I support the principle that the lessons should cover as much of la langue française as possible.

That said, I would be grateful to have more coverage of informal French. When I watch movies, I often find myself at a loss to understand what is being said by one character to another, even though I have a pretty good command of C1-level formal French. Maybe mine is a minority interest, but I just want to mention it.

In any case:

Great site! Many thanks!

Hi! Thanks for the exercise! The audio for ¨traverse le village¨ sounds very much like ¨traverse sur le village¨ - or maybe it just sounds like that to me.

Also, the ¨le maire¨ hint, I think, belongs on the audio section before where it is currently located.

Pouquoi ne pas utiliser " Savez que  vous êtes loin d'etre le seul au lieu de "Sachez que vous êtes loin d'être le seul"? L'utilisation du subjonctif est-elle nécessaire ? 

 Kevin

Why does "de" mean "in" here? 

Hello,

I came across this quiz: "Je regarde de belles collines." which confuses me a lot when choosing the answer. Because if taken out of the context of this specific lesson, I personally can't tell whether it's:

1. "I'm looking at some (des) beautiful hills"

2. "I'm looking from (de) these (les) beautiful hills " which I think also makes sense.

The answers available are: 

a) "I'm looking at beautiful hills." (correct answer)

b) "I'm watching from beautiful hills."

Can I ask why a) is correct and b) is not? Is it because "regarder de" doesn't mean "watching from"? If this is the case, what happens if it's another verb + de (in french) that means verb + from (in english)? Better yet, how can I actually say option b) in french?

I hope my question makes sense.

The text reads “Tant mieux, car je n'ai même pas encore commencé à râper le fromage”, but there’s no “même” spoken in the audio (Cécile has confirmed this to be the case in the Q&A). 

The text just needs a small correction. 

In the phrase, "où ils lui ont confisqué son portable",  Why is "lui" there?  If it's a pronoun for "him" why does it need to be there?  (The subject is "they", the verb is "confiscated" and the object is "his mobile phone".)  What grammer rule requires "him" to be part of this sentence?  Is there a lesson that explains the answer (I feel like I've missed something).

In “Salut Mathilde, ça te dirait de passer au magasin de fripes au kilo ? Salut Paul ! Oui carrément, ils ont plein de nouveautés en plus, il faut qu'on y aille avant qu'ils soient dévalisés.”

Should it be “dévalisées” because “they” are the “nouveautés” which are female & plural?

Can 'parcourir' be used interchangeably with 'couvrir' in the context of this exercise?