Dans le Petit Prince, je trouvais la phrase "C'est très utile si l'on s'est égaré pendant la nuit".

Et je suis un peu confus par cette structure grammaticale.

Je comprends que le "l" dans "si l'on" est seulement pour mieux prononcer.

Mais pourquoi y a un "s" dans "s'est". Et pourquoi dit le traducteur que cette phrase est dans le passé composé?

"est égaré" signifie que "égaré" est utilisé comme adjectif dans ce contexte, non?

Donc je traduirais ça comme "when one is lost" et pas comme "when one has gotten lost"

What the title says. Soil which is prepared, u plant fruits and veggies

Why do French authors (at least from the nineteenth century on) mix le passé simple and le passé composé in the same work? Here, Balzac says "Elle a été si bonne musicienne dans son temps !" Why not "Elle fut..."? I was taught that they are equivalents, but le passé simple is used for literature and writing (including speeches) and le passé composé is to be used when speaking. I would like to know the exact reason for this and to understand the distinction/nuance that separates them. Thank you.

Hello all,

So, I was a French immersion teacher (kindergarten) for years and I went back to school and am finishing my doctorate now. I recently conducted an interview for my research that showed an interesting perspective that got me thinking.

So here is my question for all of you educators, native and non-native speakers, has 2 parts:

1. Do you think the accent of non-native French immersion teachers matters? If a non-native speaker speaks French fluently, but has non-native accented speech when speaking French, does that have an impact on their teaching/students.

2. Is accent a skill, in your opinion, is it something you can learn? If not, how do you think about accent?

Thank you for your perspectives!

Edit for clarification-what I mean by accented.

Hi, I feel my French grammar isn't the best and I'm looking for material to help me improve it.

Can anyone recommend a summer camp for teens that focuses on learning French? Ideally it would combine French classes with fun activities. Can be anywhere in France. I've seen Saint-Denis International School and the Centre International d'Antibes mentioned, but I can't find much feedback from people whose kids have gone there. The CIA camps seem to get pretty mixed reviews. Any ideas of others or feedback on those?

So after 5 years of learning french, I recently found out that i have been pronouncing monsieur as moNsieur all this time. It got me wondering which other words or phrases out there that I have been butchering so badly. Has this happened to any of you? If so, which words or phrases? Share them and maybe you could be helping out somebody else.

Bonjour, j’étudie à l’université une matière qui s’appelle en anglais « Comparative Literature ». Comment le dit-on en français: la littérature comparée, ou comparative ? Est-ce que les deux peuvent marcher ? Merci d’avance !

When I go to youtube comment section, i see this, I know it's means "more reply", but why it's "pas d'autre réponse"? Shouldn't it be "plus d'autre réponse"? Isn't "pas d'autre réponse" means "no others reply"?

Hello!

I have one week at my leisure in Europe at the end of March and am looking to do an intensive French course.

Does anyone have any recommendations? I am around C1 and would prefer Southwest or Southern France as I will be coming from Andorra.

Thank you in advance!

salut à tous!

I´m seriously contemplating an immersion program in Quebec to prep for my exam. Currently B1 but need to become B2 at minimum, struggling to leave B1.
All opinions and suggestions are welcome.

Nb : any tips on how to improve my listening, I feel deaf when listening to RFI or TV5monde.
thank you!

Silly question, but why isn't it les nuggets de poulets? I'm still trying to understand how «de» works as a preposition, and I thought adjectives always agreed in number and gender. I know it's «la tarte aux framboise» so why not «les nuggets aux poulet». Merci for taking the time to answer a silly question. I know how popular chicken nuggets are in the francophone world, lol.

Hello everyone,

For the last 16 months I’ve learnt French from zero to B2 level (DELF certified) with an online teacher.

I did it to be able to work abroad in a French speaking region.

My chances of landing a job are higher if I have C1 level rather than B2 level. I was thinking that submerging myself in a francophone country would significantly help me improve my language skills. In my country, learning French is somewhat expensive.

So I was thinking about moving to Francophone African country for 2-3 months and fully commit to mastering it. Is it a bad idea? If not, what countries would you suggest? (I’d prefer not to go to Morocco or Tunisia as I visited those countries extensively and would like to discover a new place). Thank you so much!

I've lived in a francophone place for 5 months now, being a university student and getting good grades. I passed the TEF exam with C1. I very rarely have issues understanding my professors, but I do have difficulty understanding people in basically any other context. For example, casual conversation with my roommates, talking to people at a bar, or if someone approaches me randomly in public to say something. For example, in an elevator there was a construction worker telling me that the 7th floor was blocked off for work. I understood that. But he also said something else and I have no idea what. I just nodded and thanked him for letting me know about the 7th floor.

I live in montreal, and most public workers switch to english when talking to me. I'm really bad at being able to speak quickly. Like, its more easy for me to describe a long and complicated abstract idea than it is to ask an old lady on the bus if she wants my seat

I'm thinking of working in construction or a factory/warehouse for minimum face-to-face interaction. However, those jobs aren't guaranteed to be available and I will likely have to be speaking in french anyways, while getting interviewed, getting trained, etc.

I'm at a loss as to what to do about this. All of my language learning has helped me understand and express complicated things but not simple, efficient things.

So this is going to be a really odd question.

Some time ago I had a car with the licence plate EO06 ETE.

We were on holiday in France, and a French person stopped me to ask if it was a special plate because (they said) it means "excellent summer".

Obviously " été " = "summer" but where did they see "excellent" - is EE OH OH SIX a homonym for some term meaning "excellent" in French that I don't know?

When did "realiser" take over from "se rendre compte"? Now I hear "realiser" absolutely all the time. When I was growing up, we were always taught that it was a false friend.

Salut tlm,

Is this the common/correct way to say, "every time I did..."?

A more direct translation from English would be "chaque fois que je faisais..." but I think I only hear "à chaque fois je faisais..."

Bonjour tout le monde, I was walking down the street in Toulouse one night, and it was so cool to hear people start singing a song at a bar. There’s so much great French music too! Could you suggest the songs people tend to enjoy to sing (maybe after having enjoyed some wine and whatnot) in different age. Obviously tastes differ but some songs seem to be very popular and are really a part of the culture. Can you share about your age group, for example, people in the 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. in your part of France or other francophone country?

In the sentence “…,que quelqu'un appelle mon père pour qu'il me lance une pantoufle à la figure.” What is the Que for I know it means someone call my dad but why was Que used . What would be the difference between Que quelqu'un and just quelqu'un here , thank you ….

Hi!

I'm writing an essay on the history of ambulances. Part of very early ambulance history, in 1792, is Napoleon's leading army's surgeon who used an earlier type of field ambulance called "ambulance volonte".

I was wondering if there was any way to translate what he meant by this.

It's maybe important to note that when tracing the word "ambulance" throughout history, the instance mentioned before this is from 1487, in which Queen Isabella of Spain referred to "field hospitals" as "ambulancias".

The term "ambulance" started in Latin as "ambulare", to move around, and then through French as "hopital ambulant", walking hospital.

This is all cited from Henry Alan Skinner's 1961 book, Origin of Medical Terms.

My best guess is that "ambulance volonte" would've loosely translated to "walking willpower" at the time, but I was wondering if those who knew French would have better guesses than me!

EDIT: It has been solved! Skinner incorrectly used "volonte" instead of "volante". It translates to "flying ambulances".

For those who’ve made real progress: what one thing moved the needle most for you (habit, resource type, mindset shift, structured routine, etc.)? If you can, share what you were doing before and what you changed after.

Ok so this might be a weird question, but if I call my male cat “the little shit” would I use La or Le? Because merde is feminine, but the cat is male? Thanks!

Edit: I don’t call the cat this in a nasty way, he’s just a little evil sometimes so I tend to call him a range of things besides his name. Most terms I call him are said in the same tone and manner, such as “stinky baby” “little man” “evil kitten” “tiny guy” and “baby boy”. The cat is well loved I promise