French language Q&A Forum

Salut, dans vos premiers indices, pourquoi donnez-vous "Bonne chance" = "good luck," quand le meilleure reponse est "la bonne fortune"?: Merci.

  : pour apporter la bonne chancfortune à tout le monde ! 

Is féerique a possibility in the last line?

Why is the plural form of "complimenter" used in this sentence? 

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!

  Elderly Brit here. I would use the English past perfect in both halves of a sentence like  "By the time I had finished eating, he had drunk a whole bottle" - when he’s drunk the bottle, I’ve already finished eating, a completed action.

Without wanting to split hairs, is the concept of the French "le temps que" slightly different to "by the time that" or does it just take (to my mind!) a less logical tense?

I'm wondering if in the lesson on d'ici.... the English translation might be "between now and such and such a date or time" and that d'ici be explicitly contrasted with "dans", which of course refers to a specific time when such and such will be done rather than a span of time within which it will be done. Just a thought. It was not until I came up with this idea that I began to understand "d'ici..."

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A couple of the examples appear to use être in constructing the past tense:

Yann est passé par ton quartier 

While others use avoir:

Nous avons passé une semaine

I am curious about the grammatical function of "de" in a sentence such as the following:

"Je ne prends pas de bonnes résolutions." 

Thank you!