Ask Alexa: May FAQ

The word ‘promenade’ means ‘a stroll’, we use it with the verb ‘faire’ to make it a verb ‘faire une promenade’ : to have a stroll, to go for a walk

‘j’ai été’ and ‘jétais’ can both be translated as ‘I was’. As it is an auxiliary verb it is very versatile, the same applies for ‘j’avais’ ‘j’avais eu’. The imperfect tense can be used to describe memories and feelings such as ‘quand j’étais jeune’ when I was young.

Re verbs are considered irregular though some re verbs are conjugated following the same pattern. There are 3 group verbs and RE verbs belong to the third group. The French Besherelle also splits the verbs into 3 categories and puts verbs such as ‘entendre’, ‘vendre’ etc in the third group. Other verbs in RE are ‘mettre’ ‘joindre’ ‘battre’: these verbs are highly irrgular and are considered 3rd group.

No a lot of animals will have a different spelling if they are femal animals: eg: le lion/la lionne, le chat/la chatte, le chien/la chienne, un coq/une poule, un canard/une cane, un cochon/une truie, un mouton/une brebis, un taureau/une vache etc…

We do not say ‘Qu’est-ce que tu y penses?’ but ‘Qu’est-ce que tu en penses’ ? The ‘en’ refers to a point mentioned previously: ex: Et si on allait au restaurant ce soir, qu’est-ce que tu en penses ? The ‘en’ replaces the idea of going to the restaurant tonight.

Cet ado est bien dans sa peau - this teenager is comfortable with himself. Is the expression être sa peau ? ‘être bien dans sa peau’ is an idiom which literally means: to be good in his/her skin (to feel good in yourself)

In this case ‘au’ is used with compound prepositional structure such as your examples and they must be learn by heart this way. ‘Au’ is also used as a simple preposition to replace ‘à le’.

Bonjour Amy, there are 2 auxiliary verbs in French Etre and Avoir. Both are used to form the past tenses. One is use over the other depending which kind of verb is used : is the verb a reflexive verb? is the verb a movement verb? If this is the case then the auxiliary Etre should be used. Subsequently, any past participle used with Etre should agree in number and gender with the subject. In the example given :eIles se sont prises en photo’ ‘prises’ ends with an ‘es’ as ‘elles’ has been used with a reflexive ‘se prendre’ and therefore with être ‘sont’, so the ‘es’ reflects on the feminine plural of the subject.