Tuesday, March 14

learning "le français"

le français

everytime i get to the point that i THINK i've learned something, they go and change the rules.

:: grrrrr ::

my wall is currently full of these things - mostly dedicated to conjunctions that use the subjonctive, neatly divided by group: "but*" "condition" "temps*", etc.

argh.

*but = goal, temps = time

3 comments:

KathyMac said...

i at least have the APPEARANCE of being a dedicated learner :). the actual retention of said learning remains to be seen.

Unknown said...

There are definitely too many tenses to learn. I think I stopped absorbing after the past tense. My brain just doesn't function in imperfect and conditional tenses!
Hang in there!

Anonymous said...

it's more about the real meaning rather than the use of such or such conjunctions. Subjonctive is a tense of "desactualisation". For instance "avant que" will be followed by subjonctive because what will follow isn't sure to happen. "Après que" is followed by subjonctive but actually it shouldn't.

Another good example :
"Je pense que" is followed by "indicatif" because, to you, what will follow is real. But "Je ne pense pas que" or "Je doute que" or "j'aimerais que" will be followed by subjonctive because you don't think what follows is real.

then subjonctive is used to represent things in general/with no time/place indication. Like in "C'est le premier qui...", "je trouve bien que"...

Don't just focus on the conjunctions, you might miss the other cases. :)