French language Q&A Forum

What does this mean, kindly illustrate it with an example.

When the subject of your interrogative sentence is a noun, this one comes first and it's then repeated by the matching pronoun

"qu'on pouvait passer ses vacances ainsi"   Why l'imparfait and not le conditionnel?

Hi,

I had written, "...  nous étions partis" in lieu of the recommended, "... nous étions parties". I don't understand the recommendation:

So "étions" as auxiliary "être" in imperfect (indicative) tense, 1st person plural, added to the past participle "parti" so as to construct the compound past perfect tense. 

I constructed the past particle as male gender plural so, "partis". This as we have two assumed female genders (Joséphine and the writer Amélie) as well as at least one other, gender unknown, as expressed through the larger sentence, "... et avec laquelle nous étions parties". 

I thought the rule for French grammar was, choose the male gender when the gender is unknown...l don't want to support patriarchy. I do want to get my grammar straight. Thanks!

I keep making the mistake of dropping "Ne" on this one because I watch a lot of policiers, and when the cops burst into a room they always shout "Bougez pas !" Note to self: don't model your grammar on TV cops.

I've read all the comments here and in the related links, several times.

It seems the rule be stated as, there's NO gender/number agreement of the participle when there is a direct object following the verb.

Ça vous dit ?

Qu'est-ce-que cette citation veut dire ? 

"he must be worried sick at the idea that I'm worried/anxious about his silence" ?

Quoi ? S'il a mal, avec intoxication d'alimentation, cloué au lit, il a plus des problèmes que si elle est inquiété, non ?

Si ça n'est pas correct, je n'en aucune idée. 

The phrase in English was "I will introduce her to Amelie" (sorry I don't have accents).  The translation given is je lui presenterai Amelie which I take to mean "I will introduce Amelie to her".  Should it not be "je la presenterai a Amelie"?

In the example, “Achète-t-il des pâtes?”:

“achète” technically ends in a vowel but it ends in a T sound, right? So why is the extra “t” necessary?

Please help me how to use 'la voilà' le, les voilà etc. Is it an expression or something else? Thank you. 

There seems to be a mistake on this page. Everything is in English!