French language Q&A Forum

Bit of clarification please:-

- Isn't 'I pass by the new coffee shop' better translated by 'passe par' ? The exercise on Passer  gives -Passer par / devant ...   (to pass by / in front of...)

- does not 'J'aime' mean 'I love' and wouldn't 'J'aime bien 'I like' be better in this instance? (the excercise on Aimer says 'Note that when using aimer bien, it actually lessens its meaning from 'to love' to 'to like' [someone] / [something].'

Ma femme viendra nous rejoindre après avoir couché le bébé.

My wife will come and join us after putting the baby to sleep.

(HINT: Use 'coucher' (to put to bed))

I put:

Ma femme viendra nous rejoindre après être couché le bébé.

I thought coucher takes être as its auxiliary. Does that only apply when its reflexive? Or is there some other problem?

Thanks so much for letting us know about the Aubracs.  Most Americans no nothing about them.  Their courage and skill in working for the Resistance is inspiring.   On our Veterans Day, it is yet another story of the people who sacrificed much to overcome tyranny.   It is much appreciated! 

Shouldn’t it be Viens-tu      Also achètes-tu     

In the first sentence, "la tempête [...] a frappé notre village à Noël," why do we use "à" here? Can you say, "la tempête a frappé le Noël"? Is "à" used with all holidays, e.g., "la tempête a frappé à Paques," etc.?

Each of these expressions are translated using 'du'.  In English, both are possessive.  In the first case, we are talking about a place, so I can rationalize the use of 'du' instead of 'de'.  In the second case, I have more of a problem.   It seems like a simple use of the possessive which I think would call for 'de' instead of 'du'.  Can I get some guidance here?  Thanks.

I got "nearly" as an answer on a quiz for an example that was never given. 5,900.45 (pounds) is never shown as 5.900,45 in French, only 5 900, 45 in French. Please explain.

What do the letters OVNI stand for ?

Taking Maarten’s sentence as a starting point “When 'on' can be replaced by the specific subject pronoun 'nous', adjectives agree with number and are therefore plural (only the past participle/adjective, not the auxiliary verb conjugation).”

My question is, assuming that we have decided to indeed follow the agreement rule, if the specific group that “on” refers to were all female, would the sentence then be “On était éberluées”? I.e. does the gender get reflected in the adjective in the same way that it would if we used “nous” and the group were all female (“nous étions éberluées”).

"Plonk" in english means an "ordinary, cheap, possibly inferior" wine. It does not mean bad wine. Does "la piquette" mean bad, or inferior, or both ??