Talk:French verbs

message: The article currently translates "aie-le fait" (perfect imperative) as "have it done", but this explanation is not very clear to me.  Can someone give a more fleshed out explanation of what situation you would use this in and what would be a longer translation in English?  Thanks. Gronky 17:42, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: « Aie-le fait avant […] » means "Do it before […]", but whereas French can use either the neutral or the perfect aspect for such a situation (the preceding being the perfect-aspect version, the neutral-aspect version being « Fais-le avant […] »), English generally only uses the neutral aspect, the perfect aspect construction ?"Have done it before […]" being exceedingly rare. However, English does often use a construction that's similar to the French, both superficially and semantically: "Have it done before […]". (The French translation of this would actually be « Fais-le faire avant […] ».) So, that point in the article isn't really well covered, but I don't know how to explain it better without giving the present perfect imperative way more space than it warrants, seeing as it's a fairly rare construction in French. —RuakhTALK 03:42, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unclear: aie-le fait 

message: This article should mention the phrase "venir de". Utterly ignorant about the proper grammatical terminology to use, I won't include it myself. And yes, this phrase isn't presented as a tense in textbooks, but it's used like one -- to express an action that took place just before another one. (Il venait de ranger la vaisselle lorsqu'elle est entrée dans la pièce). It's a greater degree of temporal precision than what one has in "Il a rangé [rangea] la vaisselle avant quelle n'entre [entrât] dans la pièce).
--Zantastik talk 21:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Venir de 

message: I don't know how to translate "fr:futur antérieur" in English (anterior future?) but this compound tense is very common and is missing in the article. It allows some nuance with sentence like "When she arrives we will go for dinner" that can be translated as "Quand elle arrivera nous irons diner" (it implies some "as soon as") or "Quand elle sera arrivée nous irons diner" (it implies a prerequisite). It would be wrong to see it like an indirect form because the auxiliary verb used depends on the main verb and so ab be "avoir" (to have) instead of "être" (to be) in my example. "Quand il aura fini de gémir nous discuterons" (when he "has stopped" whining we will talk) vs "Quand il finira de gémir nous discuterons" (when he stops whining we will talk).
In other words the nuance is with "futur antérieur" the first action will be in the future from now but in the past of the second action. With simple future both actions will share the same time. Hope this helps.--Overkilled (talk) 10:16, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Futur antérieur 

message: The introduction lists the grammatical voice as one of the conjugation schemes, but the idea is not developed in a paragraph of its own, so I will be writing this part.
PS: There are only two voices in French, not three, so I'll change the introduction accordingly. Aside from the active and passive voices, the middle voice does not exist in French. It can be partly expressed by reflexive verbs (verbes pronominaux), but as these verbs are not limited for the middle voice, they are strictly included within the active one.
Fadibk (talk) 20:48, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grammatical Voices 

message: The article would benefit from examples of use of the subjunctive mood.
The article: "As with the indicative, the subjunctive also has one compound tense form for each simple tense form." So I imagine a two-by-two table, with the "simple tenses" in the first column, and the "compound tenses" in the second column, along with a note in each cell of the row for the imperfect subjunctive to say that this usage is archaic.
My knowledge of French doesn't allow me to do this myself. Count Truthstein (talk) 01:07, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: On further consideration, it seems that much of this information is at French conjugation. Count Truthstein (talk) 16:07, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

text: I've reorganized a little to make the eight tenses (which are quite neatly shown at French conjugation#Avoir) more obvious. Count Truthstein (talk) 16:35, 12 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples 

message: I was just wondering what this article's view on the past historic tense was, for even though it is a literary tense, it is still correct. Would it not, therefore, be acceptable to provide the traditional form of the phrases with their colloquial/popular alternative? For instance:
"Je demandai qu'il partît." (Colloq. "J'ai demandé qu'il parte.")
Thanks for your time.
RPlunk2853 (talk) 06:21, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Past Tense 

message: Is not correct!89.168.183.3 (talk) 15:57, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Je veux qu'il le fasses  

message: Section A.3 is just wrong: "The above rules apply in writing only. In speech, the past participle of a verb conjugated with avoir is nearly always invariable." There's already a [citation needed] tag but that statement is simply  not true.
There might be some confusion in the author's mind because in most cases the feminine and plural form of the past participle sound identical to the default masculine and singular form, but when they don't sound identical the written form is reflected in speech.
For example:
* La robe que j'ai mise est trop petite. ("meez". sorry I don't know phonetics) is correct, but 
* La robe que j'ai mis est trop petite.  ("mee") is incorrect even in speech.
Also there might be some  expressions (especially with faire) where the rule does not apply but these apply in text and in speech. Example: Je me rappelle des promenades qu'on a fait ensemble, here fait is the singular and masculine form even though promenades is feminine and plural ; this is correct in speech and in writing.
207.45.249.136 (talk) 16:38, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Past participle agreement - mistake 

message: The article as it stands is unsatisfactory on the tense je vais le faire and the difference between this and je le ferai. The usage is not exactly the same as the English 'I'm going to do it' and 'I'll do it'. It would be nice to have an explanation of this. Another thing about this article, there doesn't seem to be a single reference to any grammar book, either written by a French author or an English one. I imagine there are quite a few books written by British writers explaining the differences between French and English on points such as this, but the writer does not seem to have consulted them, or indeed any book at all. Kanjuzi (talk) 15:16, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Je vais le faire 

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