French language Q&A Forum

Hi,

How often can I take the quiz of the topics in my notebook and how long do I have to wait after first attempt to do it again please? thank you.

Why is it that " et j'ai vraiment apprécié l'espace supplémentaire" not in imparfait if they are describing the setting and expressing emotions. The next time they express their past emotions it is in imparfait "et nous n'étions pas fatigués à l'arrivée."

When looking around on the internet, it seems like "Retourner" is used here and there, both informal on message boards and formal on shopping sites (for example H&M website: "POUR RETOURNER UN ACHAT EN LIGNE"), for indicating returning an item.

Could you elaborate on this and why you write "Retourner never means to return (something) in the context of a shop for example." ?

Hi,I'm doing B1 French and I generally understand the use of the subjunctive but got tripped up recently. The first example was " we want someone to guide us".  ..."on veut que quelqu'un nous guide'

Am I right on thinking the subjunctive is guid+e relating to "on" which is 3rd person singular and therefore guide+e. Of course the " on veut que" demands the subjunctive.

In the second example " He wants that we guide him," ( Il veut que nous le guidions), the Subjunctive ending is guid+ions  relating to "nous" which is 1st person plural therefore ends in "ions".

What adds to the confusion is that "on veut" is conjugated like "Il or "elle" but in informal use " on" can mean " we" which is "nous" in French.  I hope I have explained everything well ( and as an aside j'éspere is not a Subjunctive trigger in the affirmative but is in the negative) so you may see why it's so difficult sometimes. Any comments gratefully received.

is, for example, j'habite (or j'hésite) spelt like that even in written texts? If so why?

I’m wondering if there’s a logic for having a singular beetroot in this phrase? Usually you’d make it with more than one, as with "tarte aux pommes"

I am doing B1 French and reading Camus La Peste( hard going sometimes) On page 173 he says"elles suffirent" which I take to mean they were enough,and I struggled with the conjugation but I found it as passive simple on the Lawless website. I interrogated Gemini AI and it suggested that passive simple is a compound tense requiring auxiliary from etre...despite its name. It also suggested Camus often used passe simple in a stylistic for without the auxiliary. So,is the Lawless conjugation right,and is elles suffirent passe simple, and please,what is going on?

I understand that you are trying to be politically correct by using "they/their" when speaking of Ankou in your English translation even though it's a singular noun.  If this were a non-binary French person, I could understand your effort.  But in English we would say "it" for this strange, unknown figure.  Why not use that?  It gets very confusing.

Why isn't it "Les parents n'avaient pas cessé de râler et de se disputer"?

J'aime le fait que certains des Européens peuvent se moquer de ce problème.