Excercises: corrections please

I found this book in the library: French Sentence Builder by Elaine Kurbegov

"Translate the following sentences into French"- Excercise 1

1 My brother is very young.

Mon frere est meme jeune.

2. He is eighteen years old.

Il est dix-huit ans.

3. His name is Marc.

Son nom est Marc.

4. I called him yesterday. (Passe compose?; Can you please distinguish it from passe simple)

Je ai appele le hier.

Je l'ai appele hier.

5. He was not home.

Il ne fut pas a la maison.

6. He will answer me soon.

Il repondra moin bientot.

Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on March 20, 2012 at 6:18pm

(1) With an adjective, the word for "very" is très.

(2) Remember, you use avoir with ages, not être.

(4) Leave the passé simple out of the equation until you're reading novels and writing magazine articles in French-- the passé composé is what's used in everyday French. The second version of your sentence is the one you need-- the "le" always goes before the verb.

(5) As I say, forget the passé simple. In this case, you'd actually need the imperfect, because you're describing an "ongoing background situation" to an event.

(6) Apply the same rule about the pronoun that you used in (4): it goes before the verb, and needs to be one of the type that goes before the verb-- me in this case. Il me répondra bientôt.

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Permalink Reply by Katerina James on March 20, 2012 at 6:21pm

Thanks

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Permalink Reply by Katerina James on March 20, 2012 at 7:05pm

Reviewed again my forgotten grammar, Neil.

"Continuing or habitual action"

The imperfect tense is used less in English than in French. The imperfect tense is used to describe activities in the past. The imperfect tense is used to indicate actions begun in the past but not necessarily completed. It is used to express those past actions which are habitual or customary.

Since most mental processes involve duration or continuance, verbs which deal with mental activities or conditions are often expressed in the imperfect tense when used in the past.

The imperfect tense is used to describe conditions or circumstances that accompanied a past action or to designate a condition in the past that no longer exists.

PASSE COMPOSE

The passe compose or conversational past tense is used when talking about something that happened and was completed at a definite time in the past. The passe compose of most verbs is formed by adding the present tense of the helping verb avoir to the past participle. The past participle of -er of verbs is formed by adding -e to the infinitive stem."

FRENCH GRAMMAR by Mary E. Coffman (Schaum's Outlines)

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on March 21, 2012 at 3:28am

Yes, that's baasically the idea. The perfect tense marks an event that is seen as "puncutal": it is recounted as though you are not "focussing on the middle" of the action, but rather narrating it as though it was a "unit" in time.

Note that strictly speaking, what matters is not whether the event itself actually happened/completed at a definite time, but rather whether you are envisaging it for the purposes of narration as though it did.

I'm wonder if the statement that "the imperfect tense is used less in English than in French" is actually true (though they don't clarify what they mean by "imperfect tense" in English so it's hard to assess in any case).

I'm also not so sure about their statement regarding "mental processes". Verbs such as "penser", "croire", "savoir" can occur in the passé composé in French pretty much as readily as any other verb.

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on March 20, 2012 at 8:04pm

Son nom est Marc is not wrong, but Il s'appelle Marc is very much to be preferred.