Enthusiastic support for the passé simple.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!
That would literally translate to “chose a service punctual or regular.” Why isn’t instead “ponctuel et régulier?”
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!
Mon chien favorit s'appelait Pip. Why the imparfait here? It seems a simple statement, neither ongoing, repeated nor descriptive. It doesn't seem to fulfill any of the criteria of the imparfait.
"Bonjour! Je m'appelle Trefia. Je suis une fille. J'habite à Malang, en Indonésie. Je travaille ici aussi. J'aime lire les livres et j'aime écoute de la musique. Enchanté." How was it? Merci beaucoup.
I don't understand why this sentence could have is avait pu, where in no. 4 the answer is aurait pu, both meaning "could have"
Can I say Qu'est instead of
Qu'est-ce que c'est?The following sentence has the verb following 'que'. Is this OK?
C'est ainsi que se termine cette histoire.That's how this story ends.
Shouldn't it be:C'est ainsi que cette histoire se termine.
I wasn't confused about this till I read the response to why is there the "de" between"c'est" and "perdre". In your response you say if "adjective or past participle in-ed" comes after être, but there is no adjective or past participle after "c'est", so why the "de"?
us
Thank you for your contribution, Maarten !
- être + adjective or past participle in-ed + de + verb
- être + de + verb
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