French language Q&A Forum

Couple of queries:-

In the sentence ' As I grew up, it was her melancholy ...' the advice is to use c'est. Why not c'était?

and,

In the sentence 'Barbara, as you used to sing (it) so perfectly, our most beautiful love story will always be you., the 'it' refers to the 'love story' which is feminine so 'comme tu le chantais' should be 'la'?

Thanks

Hi, one of the examples includes “ passez l’aspirateur”. Presumably this means to use the aspirateur to clean. In English we would not use the direct translation using “pass”. Most often someone would say “do the hoovering”, or possibly “use the hoover” or “use the vacuum cleaner”. I may he wrong, maybe the sentence just means “pass me the hoover (as you are holding it)” but then the example makes less sense. Does passer l’aspirateur mean to use a vacuum cleaner?

Dear Cecile and Maarten,

Thank you both for your explanations. I have read the lesson you refer to several times, as well as the relevant links, (and done the kwizes),  but I still get a little confused with this issue. I plan to review this subject regularly, as I have found by doing so I eventually achieve an understanding of subjects that at first are not clear to me. I am wondering if maybe the lesson could be expanded someway to include more exercise questions or if it could be broken up into several separate lessons? Perhaps "an/annee" could have its own lesson? 

Merci beaucoup !

How does one - are we going to the cinema?- My answer was Est ce qu'on va au cinema.  the correct answer was on va au cinema. Was it not a question?

Bonjour - J’ai remarqué que l'homme de gauche a utilisé le passé simple deux fois (“et ce fut une défaite cuisante” et “notre équipe obtint . . .”).  Est-ce qu’il est courant d'utiliser le passé simple en parlant ?  Est-ce parce qu'il parlait de faits historiques ?  Merci !

Question 1)  Comment se sont passées vos vacances ? Should it not have the final 'es' ?

Query 2) If a question is asked using the past tense, can the reply be in the imparfait?

The listing of all of the cases can mislead people that may not have done previous lessons; either assume people know the difference between qui and que and cut out the listing or assume they don't and shine a light on:

(Tout ce) qui = Subject of the following verb

(Tout ce) que = Object of the following verb

I have seen both of these being used, but I'm wondering if there is a semantic/pragmatic difference between the two e.g:

Il me faut partir

Il faut que je partisse.

Do these two convey a different idea, do they express different levels of formality, or are they completely interchangeable the only difference being that the former option takes less time to say

Normally I have used the preposition à before a city, as in je vais à Paris.  You don't use au Paris.  In this exercise, we have a city with a plural name, namely Les Sables d'Olonne.  Apparently, one must use aux Sables d'Olonne in stead of à Les Sables d'Olonne.  So, is this a general rule: à + name of a singular city and aux + name of a plural city name?