miketuan

[silent fiber]

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.

[spring mason]

passé surcomposé is quite rare but usable in speaking

passé simple is never used in speaking except in really formal situations

same for passé anterieur

"eurent terminé" right? at first i thougth it referred to avaient terminé

which is more common than in English

[modern mountain]

Passé simple could be used as a joke
News tends to use more formal language than would be normal (not in all cases, but it's one of the places I see rarer tenses pop up the most)
Passé simple could be used in any kind of narration, like a campfire story or something. Most people can't just pull out the passé simple form of every single verb though unless they have a lot of experience reading/writing books that contain it, so spontaneous usage tends to be somewhat limited

Passé antérieur is significantly less common I'd say since it's so specific and most people probably hardly know how to conjugate it imo

Passé surcomposé is mostly just a regional/personal thing though to my knowledge

On the more informal side afaik

I've heard it a good handful of times in natural conversation, but it's not common

[indigo moon]

[indigo moon]

How often people use passé simple in texting each other?
like « Dès que je tournai le dos, le chat sauta sur la table »

Would they type that to make it faster?

[spring mason]

Never

Only ironically

[modern mountain]

This just reads as extra serious roleplaying or some shit

1000% would never do that just to "type faster" it'd probably take them longer to remember how to say it lol

[calm thunder]

Simple past is narrator speak

plain and simple lol