Updates to grammar/phrasebook

Following various user feedback, some updates have been made to the grammar and phrasebook sections of the site today.

When is a past tense not a past tense...?

An interesting comment I had into the site today concerned the final example on the site's page about how to say 'would' in French.

This last example deals with the (perhaps least common) case of 'would' in English being used as a historic future: "The king would die in 1457". The equivalent of this usage in French is generally to use the future tense: Le roi mourra.... Rather than being a misformed past historic (the PH of mourir would of course be mourut), this is a genuine future tense-- just with a past or future-in-the-past interpretation. If I had a euro for every time I'd seen phrases such as "The king will die in 1457" in French museums, I'd have enough money for at least one SNCF baguette.

Now, the comment received appeared to be assuming that I had mistakenly written mourra instead of mourut, whereas in fact I genuinely intended the future form. But this got me on to the question I wanted to pose to readers: is there any genuine source of confusion here? I thought it was clear enough, but do I need to add an extra note to highlight that this really isn't a future tense? Comments welcome!

23 July 2011: This week on the forum

Well, things are pretty much winding down for the summer holidays, so there is a little bit less activity on the French forum. People are naturally thinking more about their sun tan lotion and bathers right now than their French verb conjugations. For that reason, I'm going to cheat slightly in this summary and mention a couple of posts from actually just over a week ago.

One interesting question always liable to lead to sub-questions was on the use of the French preposition 'de'. Like various French prepositions, 'de' has special status as it is used pre-infinitivally, and because in some cases it is arguably used as a 'case marker' rather than a preposition as such.

Another almots equally vital topic was of playground nomenclature. As a UK speaker, I confess I'm still not entirely sure what a "teeter totter" actually is.

Issues of tense usage commonly cause problems, as evidenced in this interesting question touching on tense usage and the subjunctive in French. A particular issue highlighted by this question is that in different languages, elements of a sentence such as "pastness" may actually be encoded in different parts of the sentence: there isn't always a one-to-one correspondence between e.g. which part of the sentence is in the past tense and which in the present, even though overall, the sentences convey a similar meaning.

Your questions about French language and culture are always welcome on the forum. I know you're probably too busy packing your bucket and spade to be worrying about weighty matters of subjunctive usage, but at least some of us will still be around!

Over 2,000 members on French forum

This actually passed me by, but a few days ago we apparently reached 2,000 members on the French forum. Now obviously, I realise that nowhere near all of these are active members (though it's always good to see our growing stock of regular posters). But nontheless, it is some kind of milestone of how many people have "stopped off" at the forum to have their questions answered about French language and culture. Many thanks to al!

New grammar section: French prepositions

Readers are invited to comment on an initial version of a new addition to the French grammar section of the site dealing with prepositions in French.

The prepositions are split into various sublists: "basic" prepositions, less common prepositions, rare/archaic and compound prepositions. As with much of the site, this section will be expanded in due course, and suggestions are always welcome.

Updates/corrections to French grammar articles

A number of updates and corrections have been made to the French grammar articles as a result of feedback that has been sent to me via the site. I am always grateful for such feedback, so if anyone spots any more typos, please feel free to let me know!

This week on the forum

A recurrent theme on the French Linguistics forum this week has been the choice of auxiliary verb (avoir vs être) in the perfect tense (passé composé)-- a question which indeed applies to other so-called compound tenses in French.

For more information, you may like to consult:

- the French forum, where you are free to ask questions about the French language and French culture in general, and browse questions and answers already posted
- the site's French grammar section, which contains tutorials on this and other topics.

New worksheets: French grammar exercises

The French worksheets section of the web site now contains a new PDF with French grammar exercises. The exercises are based on the interactive ones available from the French grammar section of the French Linguistics web site. Further PDFs containing French grammar exercises will be added in the near future. As ever, your feedback on this and any content on the site is appreciated.

New exercise on 'du', 'de la', 'des'

In the French grammar section of the web site, a new exercise has been added to the page on using du, de la and des: see the new exercises on saying some in French.

The exercises follow a similar pattern to others in the grammar section: you must complete a number of boxes in which you are asked to provide the French for a particular phrase or sentence. As with other exercises, full screen versions are available for playing on a whiteboard, and the exercise provides on-screen vocabulary.

Feedback on the exercises and suggestions for improvement are of course welcome.

This week on the forum

As usual, we've seen various interesting discussions this week on the French language forum. It's interesting to see how on various occasions, a simple, innocent query about the meaning of a word or phrase can spiral into a discussion of various grammar and vocabulary points.

Some threads not to miss:

• a discussion around expressing obligation in French, which ends up touching on the somewhat quirky behaviour of the French verb obliger, and some aspects of the use of à and de before verbs in French;
• an overview of the curious form l'on in French: a variant of on which occurs under certain circumstances, but not others;
• a look at the French negative with 'de': the general use of the determiner de instead of other indefinite determiners when the entire sentence is negated.

Various entries also centre on choices between sentences produced by machine translation systems. If you use such a system, it's important to understand some of the implications. Among other reading, I'd recommend an article I wrote recently on Machine Translation.

New French vocab and grammar content

The following new pages have been added to the site:

• a basic introduction to French adjectives, which shows the basic rules for forming regular French adjectives, and includes an on-line exercise; it also includes an exercise on a basic class of "semi-regular" adjectives ending in -n, which double the -n in the feminine (italien -> italienne)
  
• in the basic French vocabulary section, a list of musical instruments in French, with some accompanying notes about how to say things such as I play the piano.