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Team "Deuxième". French team thread. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| BonneVivante Pro Member Canada Joined 4640 days ago 33 posts - 59 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 65 of 232 26 January 2014 at 4:51am | IP Logged |
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I have a question for our godparents...or anyone else who knows the answer!
I was re-reading the online version of Le petit Nicolas today, and I noticed something in the very first chapter. A link to Chapter 1 for easy reference. Geoffroy disait à la maîtresse qu’il voulait absolument être photographié en martien et que sinon il s’en irait. Le photographe était là, aussi, avec son appareil et la maîtresse lui a dit qu’il fallait faire vite, sinon, nous allions rater notre cours d’arithmétique. My grammar is pretty rusty, but I think that "s'en irait" is a conditional form and "allions" is subjunctive. I confess, I don't really understand why one sentence uses one and one uses the other, since to me they both seem similar - a statement of what will happen if a certain thing does not occur. I may be wrong on the verb forms or I may be simply in the dark about the usage nuances here. Anyone have any insight? I understand the story just fine but it bugs me that I don't understand the grammar behind it. Edited by BonneVivante on 26 January 2014 at 4:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 4991 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 66 of 232 26 January 2014 at 5:07am | IP Logged |
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Team name:
I rather like "Formidable", which works in both English and French (how Canadian); but decided to go with "Deuxième", for some of the reasons I mentioned in my post above #56. Plus, (as Sizen and Jeffers have noted, "deuxième" seems more modest (I guess that's stereotypically Canadian too), and can also be nicely abbreviated for log names. It's also a word which even those who don't speak French probably know. So: I vote for "Deuxième" as the team name. -------- Edited: to give props to the Sizen and Jeffers for their ideas. Edited by songlines on 26 January 2014 at 6:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4072 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 67 of 232 26 January 2014 at 5:14am | IP Logged |
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I may be wrong, but from what I see is that the first one says basically, "...otherwise
he would be off [leave]" if what he wants is unfulfilled. The second one is an indirect command, which can be extended to be, «Le photographe était là, aussi, avec son appareil et la maîtresse lui a dit qu’il fallait faire vite [ou] sinon il s’en irait, [ou] sinon, [que] nous allions rater notre cours d’arithmétique.» So the second one has the indirect command that can be split with the subordinate clause being «la maîtresse lui a dit que nous allions rater notre cours d’arithmétique.», with the «que» doubling purpose, serving for both the impersonal demand I) «...qu’il fallait faire vite» and the indirect personal command II) «...que nous allions rater notre cours d’arithmétique.» where I) cannot take the subjonctif since the impersonal «il fallait» is followed by the infinitif. At least that is how I interpreted it. Edited by 1e4e6 on 26 January 2014 at 6:56am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 4991 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 68 of 232 26 January 2014 at 6:38am | IP Logged |
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Team Deuxième, we have our name! - And by a clear majority.
To rename your logs (if you wish): - Edit the first post of your log; it will then allow you to change the subject field, which will be your log name. - Keep the name short; there's a character limit. And suggestions/ requests from some of the senior members in thethe TAC 2014 thread: - Make the first word in your log name somewhat distinctive. Please try not to use "TAC" or "TAC 2014" as the first word/s in your log name. (See post 1 for the reason.) - In fact, you can omit "TAC" entirely from your log name, as we now have a tag for that. -------- I'll inform both Iversen and Josquin of the name selection, so they can update the respective lists they're conscientiously keeping updated. Edited by songlines on 26 January 2014 at 12:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5163 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 69 of 232 26 January 2014 at 7:27am | IP Logged |
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Q: Why is a different tense used in these sentences? (BonneVivante)
* Geoffroy disait à la maîtresse qu’il voulait absolument être photographié en martien et que sinon il s’en irait. * Le photographe était là, aussi, avec son appareil et la maîtresse lui a dit qu’il fallait faire vite, sinon, nous allions rater notre cours d’arithmétique. A: What an interesting and puzzling question. It took me a while to understand exactly what was happening. First of all, both sentences have the same structure and they could have been worded exactly the same. Thus, the second sentence could have read “[…] et que sinon, nous raterions notre cours”. The conditional is used here because the future tense becomes conditional in indirect speech. This is called "concordance des temps". And this, I believe, is all you really need to know to express yourself properly. What comes next is just a funny twist... For stylistic reasons, in the second sentence, the author used the near future (the teacher is therefore assumed to have said “nous allons rater notre cours”) and for some odd reason, when the near future is used in indirect speech, "aller" can’t be conditional and the imparfait is used instead. Here are the transformations from direct to indirect speech: il s’en ira — il a dit qu’il s’en irait nous raterons le cours — elle disait que nous raterions le cours nous allons rater le cours — elle disait que nous allions rater le cours ==> Find the team's answers, including references, recordings or photos when necessary, here <== Edited by Arekkusu on 26 January 2014 at 7:31am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 4991 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 70 of 232 27 January 2014 at 6:14am | IP Logged |
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I've started adding listings to the posts on
page 1 which were placeholders for French resources. Up so far: Free online courses, some general reference, genders of French nouns, pronunciation, and Quebec/ Canadian French. There's still a lot more to come; thanks for patiently hanging in there! (Doing the links is the particularly time-consuming part, but fortunately the Quebec/Canadian listings were a quick job, as I was able to simply copy and paste them from a previous post on my log.) Edited by songlines on 27 January 2014 at 4:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 4991 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 71 of 232 27 January 2014 at 6:43am | IP Logged |
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Spaceholder for general language-learning resources.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 4991 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 72 of 232 27 January 2014 at 6:43am | IP Logged |
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Spaceholder .
1 person has voted this message useful |
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