French language Q&A Forum

J'ai vu que quelqu'un dèja demandait ce question, mais je n'a pas vu un repose. Pourquoi est-ce qu'il n'y a pas un change à sujet dans the phrase suivante: je lirai jusqu'à ce que je sois trop fatiguée?

You state there are two different structures involved here. In fact there are four:

1. "rappeler + person one's reminded of + à + person being reminded" ;

2 "me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur + rappeler + person one is reminded of " ;

3 "rappeler + à + person being reminded + de + [infinitif]";

4 "me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur + rappeler + de + [infinitif] "

Could this not be split into two lessons referring to A - 1 and 2, then B - 3 and 4? That would give struggling students the opportunity to crack each structure individually. As it stands, one has to hold and identify four structures simultaneously.

Or am I missing something? Is there a hidden logic that I have failed to spot?

"beaucoup des chocolatiers" is listed as the correct translation. I thought that if something followed a quantity it became "de". Thanks for clarifying this for me

At the lawlessfrench.com website, the webpage "Petit Synonyms" lists many intriguing alternatives to the term "petit". One two-word synonym I ran across & made note of when I saw it at one of the Writing Exercises at Progress with Lawless French, is 'tout petit' for petit.

In the quick lesson you use the example Ce problème, auquel je ne comprends rien, m'énerve 

Why is it auquel and not duquel ( or de qui) since comprendre is a transitive verb ? What am I missing?

I notice that my answers in this lesson might as well be random.

This lesson opens with the statement:

“In French, there are two different structures to express "reminding", depending on whether we mean to be reminded of [something] or to prompt someone to remember [to do something].”

Let’s call to be reminded of something ‘A’ and to prompt someone to remember ‘B’

The structure of A is:

“rappeler + person one's reminded of + à + person being reminded”

unless an object pronoun appears in the sentence. If there is, the structure of A becomes:

”me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur + rappeler + person one is reminded of"

So there are two different sentence structures  for A.

When we want to prompt someone to remember (B), the structure is:

"rappeler + à + person being reminded + de+ [infinitif]”

unless an object pronoun appears in the sentence. If there is, the structure of B becomes:

“me/te/lui/nous/vous/leur + rappeler + de + [infinitif]”

Note this involves two different sentence structures in the case of B. 

Each of these sentence structures differ, one from the others, so in fact there are four structures involved in French to express reminding.

As the lesson is presented, a student must retain these four only slightly different structures and identify where to use them in order to progress with this lesson.

Were the lesson split in two - using the A and B situations described above, the student would need to retain and identify only two structures at a time, leading to a better chance of succeeding in A before progressing to B.

I imagine this would lead to this lesson attracting less confusion and improved learning. Or am I missing something? Is there a logic or pattern that evades me?

Why is the infinitive used in this sentence after 'tout'?  What does this sentence mean exactly in English?

Thanks Céline for yet another well thought out exercise.   I really appreciate the rich, diversified vocabulary with so many roots that are common to similar English words.  The recognition that approximately 40% of French words are the same or almost the same has allowed me to expand my French vocabulary.  There are at least a dozen examples in this story.  Sometimes, I just guess by constructing an unknown French word from an English word.  It mostly works!  Best wishes.

Hi. Easy but frustrating question. Why is the sentence “C’est Francois Hollande” and not “Il est Francois Hollande”. In a class and being told the former. But when I state “Il est Paul Martin”, that’s correct. Merci!