French language Q&A Forum

When  i learned French in my youth ( I am now 91), the passe simple was called the Past Definite in English, is that still so ? We were also told that its use was confined to literature and it was not used otherwise. Is that correct ?

The given translation of "Vous êtes retournés dans la maison de votre enfance" is "You went back to your childhood home." 

For the passe simple of "luire", I used "luisit" and was marked wrong.  When I went back to the lesson, however, at the bottom of the page, it appears to me to say that form of conjugation is considered correct.  

I listened to the video for this construction (the first video), and it sounds to me like the speaker uses liaison for every person except the 2nd person singular (tu serais aller). Do you know what rule he is following, if there is one? I have to admit, it sounds better to NOT use liaison in that particular case.

I think it would be useful to include an example with "cinquième", so to practice the pronunsation of 15

What do you think?

Cheers

As we are doing translation practice here and we can check our mistakes here and correct it at a same time.....and if we have another document to translate and we do translation of that document at that time how would we know, it's right or wrong and if it's wrong then how can we correct it????

Is there any suggestion or any helpful method???

I always try to translate short stories from English to French but after completing it I get confused it's right or wrong..............

My French teacher just discussed that words such as Intelligent, imprimer, australien, fin.... All utilise a short "ang" nasal sound rather like what is used with the english word 'sang'. (The phonetic sound is identified with a symbol resembling epsilon with a squiggly over it- ɛ̃).  Listening to your recordings it sounds a lot like "ung" to me. Are both pronunciations OK? On Google it sounds like your usual recording (ung-), but on reverso it sounds just like 'ang-ɛ̃'. Clarification would be so welcome.

Consider...

1. "Paul should have left earlier."

As I understand it, both these sentences would be translated as "Paul aurait dû partir plus tôt", even though, in English, there is a difference in meaning. Is there a better way to translate #2 to convey the meaning that Paul was compelled to leave?

When I did my quiz, with 'Ben _______ son train presque tous les jours.', the answer box was a drop-down question. When I got my results, this question was Almost There. The answer showed two different answers! If a question is drop-down, you can't select two answers at once, can you?

Scratching my head as usual on this subject. This time concerning "et j'ai joué de moins en moins".  Since I was doing this (playing) less and less, surely that means I was continuing to do it in the past, if I'd only done it once as a completed action, I ipso facto couldn't have been doing it "less and less"!  - hence, I thought,  "Je jouais de moins en moins". Why is it Passé composé? (Will I EVER get my head round this particular issue: it's always the thing that trips me up!)