mr.moderino

[uneven moat]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

Pro tip: you can rename the thread title with `.tr <thread name>`

Make it descriptive, including relevant context, but also to the point. This way you improve your chances of getting a more relevant and specific answer.

[river ledge]

It literally means 'It is going well (for me)'.

[charred inlet]

It’s not entirely mysterious how “it goes well” might mean “I’m doing well” in a different language.

But in general, you just need to accept idioms and fixed phrases as being idiomatic

[ionic pelican]

We say "it's going well" in English too (which is the literal translation) just with a bit more nuance to it

[river ledge]

I wouldn't be surprised if it's also said in Italian and Spanish. German has it.

[sullen silo]

@white charm Hi there, please respond in the threads made under each question!

[hollow scaffold]

i mean 'hows it going'

[ivory pollen]

Ahhhhh

ty

[ivory pollen]

hello @here I have another question

Why is ca va, et toi means ''I am fine and you'' but Ca va means how's it going 😮 im stumped right now

[hollow scaffold]

it going?
it going

[ivory pollen]

And ''I am doing very well, thank you'' translates into ca va tres bien merci instead of hows it going thank you

[hollow scaffold]

yes

because of context

[ivory pollen]

ahhh

[hollow scaffold]

espesially from très bien

ça va très bien is 100% a answer even without the question

ça va; now thats ambiguous

[ivory pollen]

ahhh

french has ambiguous words i see

its strange to get used to from english

[hollow scaffold]

yes from context you will see

[sullen silo]

The well is implied

[hollow scaffold]

depends on tone

mais oui ça va :/

mais oui ça va ^^

[ivory pollen]

im guessing the literal translation is more direct and the well is added for extra clarification

[sullen silo]

Pretty much

Ça va I feel like will always be implied as a positive

[ivory pollen]

google says this means ''but yes it's okay''

[sullen silo]

tone and adverbs will change that

[hollow scaffold]

yes but expressions my guy

"eh im okay :/" and

"im okay :)"

are two different things

let alone sarcasm

but its like im okay

its going

[ivory pollen]

ahh expression. I'm only using Duolingo right now

[ivory pollen]

ahh i understand this

I just discovered comment ca va is how are you doing and ca va? means how's it going 🙂

[hollow scaffold]

comment is actually the "how"

but for yes/no questions you can drop the question particle informally, i think this is the only time "comment" can be removed

like
(Est-ce que) tu veux le poisson?

(Comment) Ça va?

cuz the answer in technicalitt is yes/no

"yes i'm going fine"

[ionic pelican]

Literally
Comment ça va? => How's it going?
Ça va? => Is it going?
Ça va! => It's going!
Ça va bien! => It's going well!

[ivory pollen]

Ahhh thank you

Bonsoir ca va bien means ''Good evening, are you doing well?'' I believe it is because of the context correct?

[hollow scaffold]

yes

[ivory pollen]

I realized French grammar is also different. une femme anglaise is ''An english women'' and not ''An girl english'' like the literal english translation, Une fille francaise is also ''A french girl'' And I got this one wrong ''Une fille angalise'' means ''an english girl'' instead of ''an girl english''

[hollow scaffold]

ouais

[ivory pollen]

also i was shocked when it was Elle s'appele Elizabeth et elle est. The J'appelle disappeared 😮

[hollow scaffold]

because she calls herself

je m'appelle - i call myself
tu t'appelles - you call yourself
il/elle s'appelle - he/she calls his/herself (both use s'appelle)
nous nous appelons
vous vous appelles
ils/elles s'appellent

[ivory pollen]

I haven't reached the nous nous and vous vous section yet but i understand the rest thank you 🙂

Comment tu 'tappelles. This is facinating, it has become ''What is your name'' and not ''How is your name''

[hollow scaffold]

how do you call yourself

[ivory pollen]

Yes! I'm used to using English logic for French

I need to divorce the languages and accept french is french

[ivory pollen]

Oof! I got one wrong! Duolingo says ''Marie Parle Francais?'' And its ''Does Marie speak French''. I was shocked I didn't know where the Does came from, in English you specifically have to say the word ''Does'', in French is it always implied and you don't have to specifically say the word for Does which is fait I think

[sullen silo]

You’ve just encountered do-support.

Let me copy paste my old answer…

In English and French, you ask questions by inversion: this is where you invert the subject and verb. Now, in English, this inversion still exists but it only works with modals and auxiliaries. For example:

He has done it. -> Has he done it?
He will do it. -> Will he do it?
She could go there tomorrow. -> Could she go there tomorrow?
Notice how the subject and verb swap? That's how you ask questions. However, in English, you can't do this anymore with regular verbs so English developed something called do-support where a dummy 'to do' is inserted to aide in inversion. This is what you meant by it meaning 'does'.
Let's check the sentence, 'He gives the bread to the child.' In older forms of English you can invert that to get, 'Gives he the bread to the child?' and if you have a King James Bible on hand, you can absolutely find that ('Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?' where 'knowest thou' is an inversion of 'thou knowest' in Job 38:33). In Modern English, however, do-support takes care of that:
He gives the bread to the child -> He does give the bread to the child -> Does he give the bread to the child?
He knows the truth -> He does know the truth -> Does he know the truth?
This can also be used to ask questions in the past:
He gave the bread to the child -> He did give the bread to the child -> Did he give the bread to the child?
He knew the truth -> He did know the truth -> Did he know the truth?

In French, this construction does not exist: you cannot go « Fait-il savoir la vérité ? ». Instead, French can invert any verb so for our two previous sentences (« Il donne le pain à l'enfant » and « Il connait la vérité ») we can just invert (« Donne-t-il le pain à l'enfant ? » and « Connait-il la vérité ? »), and Bob's your uncle. However, as you've already seen, this inversion doesn't work as nicely with nouns where you often have to repeat the pronoun; you can't just invert the noun itself.

Le professeur arrive au cours -> Arrive le professeur au cours ????
Le professeur arrive au cours -> Le professeur arrive-t-il au cours ?

Instead, French innovated by creating a question marker similar to do-support which is « est-ce que ». This marker acts as if it was the one inverted so that the rest of the sentence can remain with its original structure. To follow our example in English:

Il donne le pain à l'enfant -> C'est qu'il donne le pain à l'enfant -> Est-ce qu'il donne le pain à l'enfant ?
Il connait la vérité -> C'est qu'il connait la vérité -> Est-ce qu'il connait la vérité ?
This handy construction prevents inversion of the main clause so it's easier to maintain:
Le professeur arrive au cours -> C'est que le professeur arrive au cours -> Est-ce que le professeur arrive au cours ?

However, as you can see, where English adds a verb (to do), French adds a clause (est-ce que) so French preserves the entire phrase not just its structure. Notice how in the English examples, the conjugated verb went from the main verb to the helper do?

He gives the bread to the child -> He does give the bread to the child -> Does he give the bread to the child?
(conjugated verb changes from 'to give' to 'to do' with the original verb becoming the bare infinitive)
He knew the truth -> He did know the truth -> Did he know the truth?
(conjugated verb changes from 'to know' to 'to do' with the original verb becoming the bare infinitive)

[ivory pollen]

thank you, reading this soon 🙂

[sullen silo]

This behaviour does NOT happen in French. There’s never going to be a situation where we go « Il connaissait la vérité -> C’était qu’il connaissait la vérité -> Était-ce qu’il connaissait la vérité ? ». Instead we just insert it: « Il connaissait la vérité -> Est-ce qu’il connaissait la vérité ? »

[ivory pollen]

Question: Is Duo American? My answer ''Est Duo Americain''. Correct answer: Duo est Americain. Is this because in french the subject becomes before the verb?

[sullen silo]

If you were translating the question and not answering it, « Duo est-il américain ? » would be it. The thing about asking questions with inversion in French is that it's a pain in the arse and that's why « est-ce que » is ubiquitous. Here's two issues that come to my mind right now with inversion:
(1) Repetition of the subject
In most cases, inversion only works with pronouns; inversion with nouns is kinda allergic. Say you have this sentence, « Le professeur arrive (The professor is arriving) ». You can't just invert that willy-nilly and have « Arrive le professeur ? ». No, because « le professeur » is a noun, you have to repeat the corresponding pronoun; in this case, « le professeur » is a singular masculine noun so you go, « Le professeur arrive-t-il ? ». In question words like « pourquoi » that's annoying since you have something like, « Quand Anne arrivera-t-elle ? »
Now, you see that « -t- » ? Well, that brings us to reason 2…
(2) The addition of -t- with the third person singular
In Latin, the third person ends with a consonant, usually T. This consonant has disappeared for most verbs in French like -er verbs but still appears in inversion. This means that third person singular conjugations, which normally end in a vowel like « il parle, il arrive », have to have -t- added between the verb and the subject. So, we can't say, « Le professeur arrive-il », we have to say, « Le professeur arrive**-t-**il ? ». This thing happens with inversions in the passé composé since most verbs use « avoir » whose third person singular conjugation ends with a vowel (literally just « a ») so you always have to go like, « a-t-elle parlé, a-t-il dit ».

Just as a refresher, there are three ways of asking a question in French:
(1) The formal way: Inversion
You reverse the subject and the conjugated verb, adding -t- if it's a third person singular not ending with a consonant and/or repeating the subject pronoun if it's a noun.
Le professeur arrive => Le professeur arrive-t-il ?
Anne a pleuré => Pourquoi Anne a-t-elle pleuré ?
(2) The neutral way: Est-ce que
You just add « est-ce que » before the subject, eliding if it's required.
Le professeur arrive => Est-ce que le professeur arrive ?
Anne a pleuré => Pourquoi est-ce qu'Anne a pleuré ?
(3) The informal way: intonation
You just add a rising tone at the end of the sentence. Do note that for question words they tend to stay the end instead of moving to the front.
Le professeur arrive => Le professeur arrive ?
Anne a pleuré => Anne a pleuré pourquoi ?

[ivory pollen]

thank you for spending the effort helping me learn french

i was very bad and school and didnt enjoy any of it, but for some reason i find french interesting and fun to learn 😄

[ivory pollen]

Why does French do this The sentence is ''Je suis mexicaine, et j'habite a tijuana''. Why isn't it Je habite, why is it j'habite instead of Je Habite. Confusing me 😮

Same with l'etudiant. Why not just say Le etudiant 🤔

[hollow scaffold]

unaspirated h

and for the second, le/la contract when the noun is vowel

l'amour

l'etudiant

l'île

l'oeuf
l'histoire

same witb verbs start with vowel (only for Je)

j'aime

j'écoute

j'irai

j'oublie

j'utilise

[ivory pollen]

Ahh so all verbs start with J' if you start with I and then a Verb

[hollow scaffold]

if it starts with vowel

[ivory pollen]

So if it starts with A, E, I, O, and U it goes with j'etudiant fo example

[hollow scaffold]

no thats "i student"

student isnt a verb

but if it were then yeah

[ivory pollen]

can you explain what u mean by ''if it starts with a vowel''

[hollow scaffold]

j'etudie

[sullen silo]

étudier is the verb, étudiant is the noun

j'étudie

[hollow scaffold]

j' + verb start with vowel (I...)
l' + noun start with vowel or unaspirated H (l'histoire) (the...)

[ivory pollen]

Yes to study is an action and etudiant is the noun because ''Student'' is the thing

[hollow scaffold]

yes

student -> étudiant

to study -> étudier

j'étudie

i study

you cannot "i student" j'etudiant

study is the verb, it is an action word

student is a noun, it is a physical thing

[ivory pollen]

I'm going to be honest, I forgot what a noun and verb means. 😦 but chatgpt explained to me a little bit. So for l' (le and la) (i think le is masc and la is feminine) if it was le arbre (The tree) it would be l'arbre because Tree is a noun and we're talking about ''The tree'' in this example. And j' involves verbs like action words? And je écoute" (I listen), we say "j'écoute?

[ivory pollen]

and thank you for the help

Duolingo says ''Enchante! Moi c'est marc. J'etudie en angleterre. This means ''Nice to meet you! My name ise Marc. I study in England''. C'est means ''it is''

In this scenario is C'est a way to introduce yourself and not to worry too much about the literal translation?

[sullen silo]

Basically. You can go « je m’appelle X, c’est moi X, je suis X »

plus others

it’s either « je m’appelle » or « c’est moi » though, I feel like « je suis » is when you’ve already been introduced beforehand and you’re just confirming your identity

[ivory pollen]

thank you

Just to clarify the Adjective comes before the Noun correct? For example I got smoked on Duolingo by ''Une universite Americaine''. This one is 'Une universite Americaine'' because the adjective (Americaine) comes before the noun? Which is the Unversite because that is the person place or thing

[charred inlet]

The noun is "université"
The adjective is "américaine"

"an American university" = "une université américaine"

[hollow scaffold]

Moi c'est/c'est moi= it's me
first one is exclusively for names

you can say c'est moi

"Qui est là?" "C'est moi!"

moi c'est -> introducing name first name round

MMMEEEE i am Marc

c'est moi -> it's me

[ivory pollen]

yes, its very hard getting used to french rules. In English, we put the noun before the adjective so I would say ''An American University'' but I think French puts adjective before noun making it ''A University American'' or ''Une Americaine Universitite''

[ionic pelican]

You're saying the opposite of what you're writing, in English we put the adjective first and in french the adjective usually comes after
Also you're capitalizing stuff randomly it seems

And you switched the adjective at the end for some reason?

So I'm not entirely sure what you're understanding

[ivory pollen]

Thank you, so French Adjective first

Correct answer is ''J'habite a Chicago et tu habites a new york'' I put J'habites a chicago et tu habite a new york? How did I get this one wrong?

[ionic pelican]

french adjective last, usually, like I said

[ivory pollen]

😢

[ionic pelican]

you conjugated habiter wrong

[ivory pollen]

So noun First and then Adjective in French?

[ionic pelican]

yes

[ivory pollen]

To confirm it's Noun>Verb>Adjective?

[ivory pollen]

thank you. I realized J'habites doesnt make sense

[sullen silo]

Verbs don’t play a role here

[ivory pollen]

So it goes Noun> Adjective (in order)

[sullen silo]

Yeah, adjectives after nouns

Though some adjectives do come before, those are a minority IMO

[ivory pollen]

Just lost all my lives, Julia etudies en Espagne. Apparently the correct answer is ''Julia Etudie En Espagne'' Duolingo just dinged me. To clarify, Etudies is when you say ''Tu'' right"? Like you'd only use etudies when its ''You''. I got confused cause Julia is a girl and I thought feminime things ended with s

[sullen silo]

Julia is third person

Verb conjugation doesn’t take gender into account

It doesn’t matter if it’s Julia or Andrew, it’s going to be « étudie »

The only time gender is included is with past participles; other than that, no

[ivory pollen]

Ohhhh I was lost but this sentence explained it

[ivory pollen]

I'm confused. Why is it ''Do you work here'' for Vous Travaillez Ici instead of Tu Travailles Ici. I missed the word travaillez it closed too quickly maybe its not that version of travailles also

[sullen silo]

The pronoun ‘you’ in English covers two pronouns in French, « tu » and « vous ». « tu » is used for one person and someone who is a friend, family member, or someone who you are close to; « vous » is used for one person who is your social superior like a teacher or a higher-up OR more than one person

[ivory pollen]

ahh ty

[sullen silo]

regarding travailles/travaillez, again you should work on your conjugation

travailles is for tu, travaillez is for vous

Conjugation forms are FIXED for every person so there is NEVER any circumstance – aside from typos – where you would mix up conjugations like « tu travaillons, ils travaillez, je travailles »

[ivory pollen]

Why does it say why is it ''Tu es Professeur'' to say ''Are you a professor'' Tu es Francais? Why is it ''Tu es francais'' to say ''are you french. This smoked all my lives on Duolingo

[ivory pollen]

ahhh thank you

[ivory pollen]

Is there a video for conjugation?

[sullen silo]

TONS, you should get into the habit of looking up these things instead of asking us first

[ivory pollen]

is this the best guy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbj5Wx8GP7o

[sullen silo]

Sure but that’s not good

[ivory pollen]

will do 👍 im eager 2 learn french

[ivory pollen]

french learning hub is bad?

ill find a new video

[sullen silo]

Because you don’t need to learn every tense now

[ivory pollen]

ahhh take it slow

[sullen silo]

The order should be:

1. Présent [je parle], passé récent [je viens de parler], futur proche [je vais parler]
2. Passé composé [j'ai parlé], imparfait [je parlais], futur simple [je parlerai]
3. Conditionnel présent [je parlerais], conditionnel passé [j'aurais parlé], plus-que-parfait [j'avais parlé], futur antérieur [j'aurai parlé]
4. Subjonctif présent [que je parle], subjonctif passé [que j'aie parlé], impératif [parle !]
   From there you can learn the literary tenses: passé simple [je parlai], passé antérieur [j'eus parlé], subjonctif imparfait [que je parlasse], subjonctif plus-que-parfait [que j'eusse parlé]

Also, conjugation =/= tense

[ivory pollen]

thank u for help mr! super helpful 😄

[sullen silo]

Conjugation is how verbs change according to tense, number, and person; it’s affected by tense but not tense. A tense error would be mixing up « je parle » and « je parlais » (mixing up the present and imperfect) while a conjugation error would be mixing up « je parle » and « je parlez »

[ivory pollen]

is there a specific youtuber you are familar with that explains this well? i want to make sure i find the right guy since french learning hub is not satisfactory

[sullen silo]

Just look it up and watch around

There is no ‘right guy’

They’re all right, it’s just that their utility depends on what you want and what you need

For example, that video you just linked is valuable to me, an advanced learner, if I needed a refresher on how the tenses worked and a quick rundown of all of them. Like I already have them in my head, I can conjugate instantly, and I can sorta make out the differences but I just need to review it all.

That video however is NOT valuable to you, a beginner learner, because what you need – and what you should want – is to master the present tense; you don’t need an overview of all tenses if you’ve not even mastered one and the most important tense which is the present tense.

[ivory pollen]

What should I search up in steps

First is Presennt Tense, what is next I'm searching up

[sullen silo]

.

Do you need the English names

[ivory pollen]

I'm searching up Present, Passe Compose, Conditionnel Present and 4 subjontif present ty

[sullen silo]

HUH

NO

[ivory pollen]

😦

[ivory pollen]

yes! 😄

[sullen silo]

Do the ones PER NUMBER

[ivory pollen]

So #1 Present Tense ''je parle, je vien'' etc and then go #2

[sullen silo]

The order should be:

1. Present [je parle], recent past [je viens de parler], near future [je vais parler]
2. Compound past/past [j'ai parlé], imperfect [je parlais], simple future [je parlerai]
3. Present conditional [je parlerais], past conditional [j'aurais parlé], pluperfect [j'avais parlé], anterior future/past future [j'aurai parlé]
4. Present subjunctive [que je parle], past subjunctive [que j'aie parlé], imperative [parle !]
   From there you can learn the literary tenses: Simple past [je parlai], anterior past [j'eus parlé], imperfect subjunctive [que je parlasse], pluperfect subjunctive [que j'eusse parlé]

[sullen silo]

No, do the ones in each number so you learn: (1) Présent/present then passé récent/recent past then futur proche/near future THEN (2) you learn passé composé/compound past then imparfait/imperfect then futur simple/simple future THEN you learn conditional present etc

[ivory pollen]

i found a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKJ24-je3KE

[sullen silo]

It's more like: First stage (present, recent past, near future), second stage (past, imperfect, simple future), third stage (con present, con past, pluperfect, anterior future), fourth stage (subj present, subj past, imperative), and then literary stage (simple past, anterior past, imp subj, plu subj)

[sullen silo]

Yup that's great

[ivory pollen]

ty will watch 😄 French has been confusing for me as an dominant English speaker. I've never even looked at another language before so I'm trying to change that