Two sentences

Je vous ai posté une lettre.
I have posted you a letter.

A propos, la femme de Peter est morte quelques mois il y a. Elle était 82.
By the way, Peter's wife died some months ago. She was 82.

I want to write the above 2 French sentences in an email.
Please correct them.

My dictionary says ' à propos' stand for 'by the way'.

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Permalink Reply by Marc Vonhalmen on November 20, 2009 at 9:16pm

The first one is correct. You can also use "envoyer" instead of "poster".

"A propos" is perfectly correct here.
But "quelques mois il y a" is not. --> "il y a quelques mois"
---> "il y a + TIME_RELATED_WORD" in French = "TIME_RELATED_WORD ago" in English (il y a une semaine, il y a un an, il y a trois jours, etc.)
Also: "Elle avait 82 ans."
Last but not least: "elle est morte" is perfectly correct, but when you are telling someone that a person died, you usually use the word "décédé(e)" instead. It's a "less crude" way of saying "mort(e)".

--> A propos, la femme de Peter est décédée il y a quelques mois. Elle avait 82 ans.

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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on November 20, 2009 at 9:51pm

Thanks Marc
You are good at French grammar. I mean you could describe the patterns of grammar.
Are you a teacher of French?
Once you told me that you lived in Switzerland.

I firmly recall when President Mitterand died in 1996, I heard the words 'Il est morte'. I have been listening to TV5 for many years.
So just after the death it would be fine to use 'il est morte'.

Today you will say 'Mitterand est décédé en 1996.

In English people use the word decease. It is bit formal.
My deceased father ...
In any case, my sympathy and my respect to him will be elucidated by the words 'my late father.

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Permalink Reply by Marc Vonhalmen on November 20, 2009 at 10:52pm

You're welcome. I'm not a French teacher, but my mother was ;-)
(I'm a student in electrical engineering, and I do indeed live in the French-speaking part of Switzerland)

As "deceased" in English, "décédé" is a bit formal in French. Nevertheless, one uses it when one wants to inform someone about somebody's death in a "less brutal and less tragic" way (It's quite hard to explain...). For instance, when a doctor gets out of the operating theatre and has to announce his patient's death to the family, he will always say "Il est décédé" instead of "Il est mort".
But concerning a president's death, one would say "Le Président est mort" to announce Mitterand's death on television. One is not telling this directly to his friends and relatives, but to an entire country, making it sound even more distressing and tragic that it already is.

Last but not least, the equivalent to "my late father" translates as "feu mon père" in French (this is very formal). "Feu" here has nothing to do with "feu = fire". It's an adjective meaning deceased. When it is placed before the noun, it does not make agree with it, but it does when it is placed after the noun:
-->Feu ma mère
-->Ma feue mère