First French Test of the Year

Yeah! I like French tests when I feel confidant about them. Except, that I have to remember all of these CUH-RAZY rules, including:

1. The verb avoir, in the past tense, only agrees with the direct object if the direct object comes BEFORE the verb.

J'ai acheté cette veste. (acheter only has one "e" because, while "cette veste" is feminine, it comes after the verb).

versus

La veste que j'ai achetée est suberbe! (acheter has two "e"s because it agrees with "cette veste", which is feminine and because it comes BEFORE the verb. Yeah!

2. Sometimes, the passé composé is only correct if you're talking about things in succession:

J'ai acheté un livre que je l'ai offert. (I bought a book that I offered to him....both verbs are in the passé composé because I wrote them in the real order that they happened).

J'ai offert à mon ami un livre que j'avais acheté. (I offered my friend a book that I had previously bought...the second part has to be in the plus-que-parfait because it happened before the first action)!

3. You can visit something (visiter quelque chose) but if you're talking about visiting a person, you have to rendre visiter à quelqu'un.

4. On the same subject, if you're going to visiter quelque chose ("something"), you use que when you're combining sentences, because that quelque chose is a direct object. However, the verb aller takes quelque part ("somewhere") in place of a direct object, so if you're using a relative pronoun, you use où instead of que.

Awesome! I really can't imagine that my little grammar lessons are that interesting, but typing them out actually helps me study A LOT, and it proves that my grammar skills are improving, so I'll definitely be continuing.



The great thing about being in my situation in Paris is that everyone else is in the same situation, which means that everyone wants English speaking friends. I've been making plans with friends and then bringing other friends along, and suddenly my two three groups of friends are combining, and it's really cool (though, hard for me to keep track of who knows who). ALSO, it turns out that our favorite cafe has a live-in cat!! Life is so great!