French language Q&A Forum

Je te le dirai quand tu auras promis de te taire. Where did the pronoun le come from?

Bonjour, 

I certainly do not know enough of French culture and language to discuss your explanation of French usage, below.  However, I disagree that in English, the difference between "may I" and "can I" is that "may I" is more formal.  More accurately, "can I" may be informal and in common usage, yes, but it is also often considered abrupt and somewhat impolite, and this is not only by grammar nerds (or oldies) such as I (or grammar nerds like me, to use more idiomatic speech, ha ha).

The grammatical distinctions are obvious, of course ("can" denoting capacity or ability, "may" is conditional, one is granted capacity).  One hears often, when someone is ordering in a cafe or bar, "can I get a... ".  To many English-speakers, this is grating and impolite.  I, for one, hope that "may I have...", does not go out of idiomatic usage (though perhaps that battle is lost and I am just raving...)

Love Lawless French, by the way,

Alice

This structure is very formal as we stated before, and is usually used to sound particularly polite or even a bit affected: the nearest English equivalent would be to use May I...?"

would 'j'ai achete pour ma mere un weekend' be correct ? ( cant do the accents )

Is the phrase 'Qui que ce soit' followed by the subjunctive?

Maintenant, il faut que nous attendions Noël !

The audio of this exercise was having difficulty -- one can't replay the dictées and the replay of the whole dictation broke up into disjointed bits and pieces. Can this be fixed?

Thank you! Just a note on the English: it's more idiomatic/natural to say "I get angry easily" (or even in this context "I get annoyed easily"), at least here in the UK.

On the phrase On ne doit pas parler la bouche pleine, how come avec is not necessary to translate it to "with the mouth full"?

Bonjour, 

We know that indefinite articles "un/une/des" become "de" in negative form with the exception of verb être and verbs of states. But, does this rule also apply to the negative of interrogative sentence? 

For example: 

Il mange une pomme. -> Il ne mange pas de pomme. 

Is the following also true? 

Est-ce qu'il mange une pomme ? -> Est-ce qu'il ne mange pas de pomme ? and 

Mange-t-il une pomme ? -> Ne mange-t-il pas de pomme ? 

I didn't find any reference about negative interrogative and indefinite articles so have to ask to clear my doubt. Also, please confirm the case with negative interrogative and partitive articles. 

merci beaucoup. 

Hi, seems like the verb tomber most definitely belongs to the set of verbs which can take either auxiliary in the passé composé, depending on their transitive/intransitive usage.

As an example of such a verb, see your very helpful page here:

Monter can be used with avoir or être in Le Passé Composé depending on its meaning in French

Could you please confirm that tomber indeed deserves such a page, and in general remark on whether about 20 other verbs deserve one also (albeit not very commonly used ones?)

Thank you!