French language Q&A Forum

  Sarah ne faisait pas confiance à Thomas.

Sarah didn't use to trust Thomas.       In French can you really express the idea of “used to” (do something) just by using the past imperfect tense (as here)? Or does it need “avoir l’habitude de …” ? Is there a difference in meaning in French? Merci

There are a lot of interesting tense changes to consider in this exercise! But why do we hop back into the present tense here:

“until she gave birth to her daughter Claude”

“jusqu'à ce qu'elle accouche de sa fille Claude”

“jusqu'à ce qu'elle donne naissance à sa fille Claude”

I listened to this sentence loads of times trying to see if there was any hint of an ellision ( "je serai z-enfin" ). There was not, and thus I concluded that it must have been "serai" not "serais".  Is no ellision used after "serais" ?

Hi, in “Les filles, soyez gentilles et partagez vos affaires.” the audio for “gentilles” sounds incorrect. 

Why can’t I say “Je le trouve grossier/irrespectueux?” As the sentence read “I find it disrespectful?”

Hi, with regard to:

“when suddenly, an enormous sawshark swam above their heads!”

Half of the answers are of the type:

“quand soudain, un requin-scie énorme est passé au-dessus de leur tête !”

This set is in a format that I’ve encountered many times. 

The other half are of the type:

“lorsque soudain, un requin scie énorme leur est passé au-dessus de la tête !”

This set is outside of my grammatical experience. I’m okay with the “leur tête/la tête” difference, as I’ve learned that in French we don’t always use the possessive “leur”, and can use a definite article such as “la”, especially when the owner of the body part is obvious. But could you explain why in these “la tête” answers a “leur” has appeared in each case earlier in the sentence. Is this early “leur” necessary in order to change “leur tête” to “la tête”? How can we consider this early “leur” to connect to the later “tête” when it is separated from it so much?

So I translated "un proffeseur" to be "a teacher" and it was incorrect, with it saying I should have translated "one teacher". The accompanying grammar lesson only has information on the indefinite article (which I was using). What's going on?

I am seeing progress on these B2 listening exercises now that I keep an eye on the vocabulary list while listening to the entire passage read aloud several times. (Also, it is helping me to repeat the phrase aloud before starting to type it.)  I'd like to suggest you include "lame" and "le manche" in this vocabulary list because they are also words of a somewhat specialized nature.

"C'est une petite lampe de bureau en forme de phare breton. "

"C'est très joli ! " 

I am reading

"C'est" vs "Il/Elle est" to say it is/she is/he is in French

Based on that,  I am thinking this:  we have a specific item here, not a general subject like "La science", 

so  we can't use 2a - c'est  for general, unspecific statements and opinions

so why isn't it using : 2b "il est/elle est  for statements and opinions related to specific things"

= Elle est très jolie.

Thanks Paul.