Of all of my students, this is the one on whom my work habits rubbed off.
Déteindre sur: to rub off on. Ton pull à déteint sur ma chemise–il ne fallait pas les mettre ensemble au lavage. (Collins French-English Dictionary) Why ensemble and not ensembles, I have no clue…
*il ne fallait pas* …Thank you I didn’t have that and I will be using it today in some way a I force myself forward in my quest to rid the hot potatoes from my mouth 🥔 👄
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Il faut, il fallait, il a fallu, il faudra, il faudrait and the subj. qu’il faille . Such an ubiquitous verb, you need to know all tenses after 1 week in France …
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Whatevs as we say in England. I’m trying, really I’m trying!!!
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I can’t believe you . If you want to learn conjugations you take yourself and an old school grammar book with all the conjugations together and you study by heart ( soon you find similarities and frames) . Then you imagine yourself in situations of life when you need to use the future of this verb, the conditional of this other, at every person, and you train for a few minutes until it comes at once . That’s what I did with Spanish and Portuguese and it works, if you act as a good pupil . Within one month I could use and conjugate any verb at any tense when I was living there . So I know you are a woman, but even with this handicap you should not need more than a year … 😜
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Haha! I couldn’t help but laugh (with apologies to my fair sex) at that last remark. Actually, I am not as bad as I claim to be … my issue comes when I open my mouth to actually speak. Writing it is quite good these days but speaking I get so tongue-tied. However, breakthrough at the market last week. My favourite stall is back after their holiday and I enquired carefully if they felt rested and had had a good break. He shook my hand heartily and said he understood every word I had said for the first time since I arrived in Grenoble 8 months ago!!!
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Ah ! you see it may come, even while speaking after a few decades . Tell me one thing : how on earth is the feminine sex “fair”?
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Probably Victorian male irony, I imagine. Or even earlier … I have a feeling Shakespeare may have used the expression. If it was he then you can guarantee he was being ironic and that Queen Bess (Elizabeth 1st) missed it intentionally. There’s was a wonderfully jousting relationship.
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Fair in this sense means delicate and pretty not equitable 😉
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Ah right . Pretty and delicate are fine for me, damoiselle Fiona .
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Teaching English is as thorny as teaching French. Fair is a very fair example of why!
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I was joking, I know “My fair Lady”, fair haired, pretty and unfair of course .
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Professor Higgins … now there was a man who got more than he bargained for 😉
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Your surprise is surprising . Ensemble, together, is an adverb, how could it take a plural form ?
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It’s not about the word–it’s about the student (me)…
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I don’t really understand your response . I thought you were clueless about “ensemble” not being spelt “ensembles” . “Des ensembles” do exist but in this case “un ensemble” is a noun and not an adverb like in “On y va tous ensemble”.
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