French language Q&A Forum

After all this time learning French l decide today to develop an English/French go-to chart for translation purposes. 

All of a sudden, the conditional tense sitting in the indicative mood in my little Bescherelle conjugaison book looks out of place. Why is it there, in a mood that expresses facts and certainties,  things that definitely happened?

 A little research in Bescherelle, on the web and here surface the fact that the Conditional in French is often classified as a mood unto itself (as in Lawless French) due to it's hypothetical expressions; and that more often, today, "pour des raisons de forme et de sens"(Bescherelle p.140), as a tense under the imperative. An example given for the latter  is that "aurait" , conditional present, equates the future present transposed into the past. So interesting! I had not seen this before. 

I wonder, what went into Lawless French's decision to classify the Conditional  as a mood apart instead of as under the Indicative mood? Either works , l am just curious.

Why not des persils like des tomates?

For example: Je plante des tomates et des persils ?

That was an interesting article that Maarten linked regarding the inclusive French writing which is being promoted by various people. I am interested in how they pronounce words with middle dots such as "militant.e.s" or "ecrivain.e.s" (or are they only used in writing for the moment?) 

My on-line instructor - a native French speaker from Normandy - says that it is totally incorrect to drop the "du" when using "ni..ni". I had learned in one of your lessons that I should keep the articles le, la, les but drop "du". Which one of you is correct?

M'y answer feels awkward and is clearly wrong but i cannot find anywhere on the site that deals with when you need to use ici rather than ils n'y habitent plus in this situation... Think it needs là as well.

The help just takes you to ne..plus

Hi, I have played "J'en vaux vraiment la peine !" a number of times and it sounds like she is saying "vous" and not "vaux" - it sounds like "vaux" in "Tu vaux mieux que ça !"  - can you please confirm if it is right or wrong?

Does this mean he has lived in France for 15 years.

or He has lived in France since the age of 15.

In the last sentence we use c'est to represent the baby girl. Meanwhile, all along we knew we were referring to her as a girl and not expressing a general notion. How come we used "c'est" instead of "elle" in the last sentence? Thank you.

I didn't do as well as I had hoped yet for every response, I had portions of the phrase correct. I agree with the comments here that when the phrase is incorrect, you shouldn't respond with 'well done.' Also, it appears you are grading on the way you expect the answer to be; however, there are multiple ways to express the phrase and many of my answers were the alternative. Granted, the spelling was wrong and I missed some words but I understood how to express each phrase. I would profit from knowing what I need to work  on vs 'well done.'