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13,729 questions • 29,409 answers • 836,867 learners
Questions answered by our learning community with help from expert French teachers
13,729 questions • 29,409 answers • 836,867 learners
Is there any way to determine whether a sentence should end in a period or an exclamation point? In English, there is generally a difference in the tone of voice: a regular, matter-of-fact tone usually indicates a period, while an excited tone (angry, happy, etc.) usually indicates an exclamation point. For most of the sentences in the dictation exercises, I don't hear anything that lets me determine which one I should choose. In this exercise, the only sentence that seems to me to require an exclamation point is the very last one: « Miam ! »
I know that intonation in French is different from English, but I just don't grasp how some punctuation works in French.
I found both le grand huit and une montagne russe and I always have trouble deciding which option to use (usually the "wrong" one! as in this case I used la montagne russe which was corrected to plural. The alternative option (the preferred response) le grand huit was not. Can someone explain?
Since the Czech Republic changed their name to Czechia, has the name in French changed? If so what is it? Has the gender changed?
To emphasise that a (recurring) action in the past has now stopped happening with depuis, you can also use Présent indicatif with ne ... plus (not any more) instead of ne ... pas. Here ne...plus focuses on the change between the past situation and the new current one, which it highlights, hence Le Présent.
Tu ne bois plus d'alcool depuis cinq ans.You haven't drunk alcohol for five years.Je ne fume plus depuis 1998.I haven't smoked since 1998.I am confused about these examples. I understand the structure and they seem to be more or less interchangeable, but I want to understand the difference. The qualifier makes sense, to indicate that the action has now stopped, but the examples don't seem to illustrate that.
How do those English sentences indicate that an action has now stopped occurring? "I haven't drunk alcohol for five years" -- termination began five years ago when I stopped drinking. Does it mean that the term of the five years has just completed?
But then, if so, with "je ne fume plus depuis 1998," we don't even have a defined term, it's that year to the assumed present and the stopping smoking happened in 1998.
I really want to understand so thanks in advance for any clarification!
The answer transalted to English is actually ' the more you eat chocolate the happier you are'. I would argue that the more chocolate you eat and the more you eat chocolate are not the same thing.
What happens when the indefinite article is followed by a preposition?
For example :
Le médecin travaille dans un hôpital.
The negative sentence according to the rule is ' Le médecin ne travaille pas dans d'hôpital ' .
But d'hôpital sounds so absurd.
Is there any rule of negation when the the indefinite article is followed by a preposition?
«Il pense avoir fini ce rapport d'ici jeudi.
He thinks he'll have finished this report by Thursday».
«ATTENTION
When using verbs of opinions such as penser (to think) and croire (to believe) to say 'I believe that / I think that' in French, you always need to put que ('that') after them, whereas in English you can sometimes omit it.»The first quote is an example from this lesson, the second from the lesson on penser que, croire que. Although the English translation in the lesson doesn't include 'that', it is implied and seems to meet the previously noted rule that 'pense que' should always be used in French. I also don't understand why it would not be 'pense qu'il avoir fini'? What am I missing? Thanks
Je suis désolé but I cannot make a complete sense out of the following sentence: que vous humecterez de vos lèvres avant de lui essuyer les joues. You make le mouchoir wet with your lips before wiping your cheeks? So, what’s she doing ?
I've keyed the below sentence into google.
As the subject is the 'same person' in both parts of the sentence, is the translation wrong?
According to the lesson the subjunctive occurs when something happens so that someone else does something.
"I do it so that I look beautiful" ... "Je le fais pour que je sois belle."
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