Il y avait des racistes. Means there was racists, suggesting somehow there are no racists anymore today. If you add “toujours” it means there was racists whatever the time period we look at, but not today. That’s not what the ...
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How do French people turn nouns into adjectives (of a sort)?
Business EditorsShort version: -eux might be the best candidate, as well as -ique, if you have to use an adjective construction instead of a paraphrase. Long version: read on. 🙂 Morphological derivation Since knowing the technical name for a phenomenon always ...
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Combinatoricien vs combinatoriste
Associations EditorsDans l’hypothèse où il existe des mathématiciens spécialistes de combinatoire, j’aurais plutôt tendance à les appeller analystes combinatoires, spécialistes de la combinatoire ou si je dois l’employer souvent combinatoristes. Pour ce qui est des fondements linguistiques, d’après ce tableau (non ...
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Pays de Galles: is “Galles” a plural?
Associations EditorsAfter some research, I may be able to clarify some points. It appears that, yes, Galles is a noun that represents a plural noun, as you showed before with the cnrtl definition. However, you need to know that this word ...
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Translation of “I have as much fear as you”
Business EditorsYou could say: J’ai aussi peur que vous. or: J’ai peur autant que vous. J’ai autant peur que vous. But J’ai autant de peur que vous. doesn’t quite work for me. "Quantification of fear" might not quite work with "peur". ...
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How to say in French “I/He/She told him/her/me that…”?
Associations EditorsIn such constructions, the usage of the infinitive is a bit special. A sentence such as “Je lui ai dit de venir” can only mean that the person you are talking to is doing the action. You are asking the ...
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What is ungrammatical about these sentences?
Associations EditorsThat is a problem of languages that use two terms for functions and professions as taken up by human beings, a masculine term and a feminine one, without any difference in meaning. Either there is in that language a third ...
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N’importe quoi n’importe quand
Associations EditorsLa traduction que tu proposes : Ne fais pas n’importe quoi n’importe quand. me semble relativement juste et assez fidèle à la version anglaise de départ. On pourrait éventuellement lui préférer Ne fais pas tout à n’importe quel moment. Cependant, ...
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Cliticization of “je” in spoken French: which syllable gets the /ʒ/ sound?
Associations EditorsIn spoken French, the contraction that you can sometimes hear could be written like this: Quand j’pense But this is not really a rule, since you do not usually write like that. It is the same for every verb: Quand ...
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Is there a single word for “sky” and “nothing”?
Associations EditorsI’m not perfectly sure I got your anecdote right, but if it is the case, your friend had to be bluffing. Not that I’m positive that no such word exists in French, but for the simple fact we just don’t ...