Saturday, November 5, 2011

What are these french phrases in english?

The other guy's answers are fine, but have no context. Here we have 5 tenses, 1 mood and 2 participles. The verb is 'aimer'. The perfect tense in when something has been completed and isn't ongoing. However the imperfect is sometimes translated as 'used to (like)' or 'was (lik)ing' so it's something that happened for a longer period of time possibly up until the moment you speak. Don't worry about the past historic - this is a literary tense used by authors and journalists - it's only ever written and you'll see it in books and newspapers and nowhere else. The subjunctive exists in English too - it all depends on something but could also never happen. In English we say 'If I were....' or 'May God save...' we only have a couple of phrases but French has many which always start with a 'something QUE' such as 'bien que j'aime' (although I like). The conditional is just that - it depends on a condition - 'if he recommends that book, I WOULD like it' the verb 'j'aimerais' means 'would like'. The conditional past is the same, just in the past 'if he had told me earlier, I would have liked it' 'j'aurias aim�' means would have liked. The present participle means '...ing' (so liking) and past participle means '...ed' (so liked). The auxiliary verb for 'aimer' is 'avoir' hence the tu AS aim� (you [have] liked). Hope that helps!

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