French language Q&A Forum

Like chris w I find this one difficult every time it comes round, due to the English translations given - 

1. the English "certain" can carry either of the two meanings described here

2. "particular" also has several meanings, but it’s usually specific and not at all vague.  Perhaps some more examples would help?

In the phrase, "Bonjour Lucile, nous assistons en direct à un début de course palpitant...", 'palpitant' seems to agree with 'début' instead of 'course'.  I would think that the course is thrilling rather than its début.  Is it because le début de course is a compound noun and, if so, the agreement would always be with the principle part, in this case début ? 

I want to translate the following into French:

When I had signed the letter, Maurice mailed it.

I would write this:  "Quand j'avais signé la lettre, Maurice l'a envoyée."

What I want to do is avoid the pluperfect in the subordinate clause. l reached for the usual stand-by "Après avoir/être + past participe" but that will not work here, as there are two subjects (I have always used "Après avoir ..." in the context of there otherwise being one subject) and "Après avoir signé la lettre, Maurice l'a envoyée" means "After having signed the letter, Maurice mailed it" but it also means that Maurice both signed it and mailed it.

 That is inescapable because "Après avoir/être ...", a hanging participle/dangling modifier, lacks a subject, which is provided in a sentence by the first noun in the main clause, thus there is no doubt as to who signed it - it's Maurice because of the operation of that principle. (At least, that's the case in English; if French is somehow different, please tell me.) 

I then tried "Après que ..." but I still end up with the pluperfect because inescapably the signing of the letter is complete and precedes the posting of it by Maurice.  Then I thought to use the passive, but that seems generally to be anathema to the French and it is really clumsy to try it here.  Then I thought to change the exact English formulation of the sentence and use "J'ai signé la lettre et puis Maurice l'a envoyée" but I don't think that that helps (nor is it correct). The signing precedes and is complete before Maurice's action and I keep ending up with the obvious - passé composé for Maurice's action and plus-que-parfait for the action that preceded it (signing).

On reflection, I suspect that I can only resort to the passive to solve this problem:

Maurice a envoyé la lettre qui avait été signé par moi.

(It doesn't matter to me that the passive is anathema to the French; this is just part of a grammar exercise.)

Do you think that that is correct or am I missing something in my quest?

Any solution please, other than the passive, to re-write the original in a way that avoids using the pluperfect in the subordinate clause?

"Moins le quart" is hardly perceptible.

Hello everyone :)

Just a small question, why do you use "faire une escale?" instead of "avoir une escale"?

because it's not "make the stopover".

Thank you in advance for your advices and responses.

Just to make the point that in UK English, it’s commoner to say "nowhere I’d rather be" or "nowhere that I’d rather be" - this avoids the where-where sound but also makes it harder to remember we need nulle part où rather than nulle part que.

The examples of use of the passive voice use is, will be, would be, was and used to be.  Please provide an example of "had been".  Is it for example "La souris avait été par le chat"?  

bonjour mes amis,

est-ce qu'on peut utiliser « à côté de » comme un sinonyme pour « avec » ? Ou c'est seulement pour la distance ?

par ex.: C'est notre livre, on va l'étudier à côté d'une bonne méthode pédagogique.

Merci bcp d'avance.