Français au niveau supérieur

The present subjunctive — after will, necessity and emotion

Le subjonctif présent : formation et emplois

The subjonctif is a mood, not a tense: it is the French way of signalling that something is wanted, required, doubted or emotionally judged rather than simply stated as fact. English speakers are often told they have no subjunctive, which is not quite true — you still have a fossilised one, and it appears in exactly the same places: "It is essential that he be present", "The board insists that she resign", "If I were you". Those bare, uninflected forms are the direct cousins of il est essentiel qu'il soit présent and la direction exige qu'elle démissionne. The difference is one of obligation: in English the subjunctive is optional and slightly formal ("that he is present" also passes), whereas in French it is compulsory, audible and marked on every single verb.

The biggest structural trap for an anglophone is the pattern "want somebody to do something". English uses object + infinitive: "I want you to leave earlier", "They'd like the team to be more autonomous", "I need him to send the references". French has no such construction — *Je veux toi partir* and *Je veux vous partir* are impossible, and so is the other common improvisation, *Je veux que tu pars*. Whenever the two verbs have different subjects, French switches to que + subjonctif: Je veux que tu partes plus tôt. Whenever the subject is the same, French uses a plain infinitive and English agrees with it: Je veux partir plus tôt = "I want to leave earlier". The same split governs il faut (Il faut partir maintenant = one must leave, in general / Il faut que tu partes maintenant = you specifically must leave) and the pairs avant de / avant que, pour / pour que, sans / sans que, à condition de / à condition que, afin de / afin que. Diagnostic: if your English sentence has two different people in it, expect que and a subjunctive.

Forming it is mechanical. Take the ils form of the present, remove -ent, and add -e, -es, -e, -ions, -iez, -ent: ils parlent → que je parle, que nous parlions. The nous and vous forms then look identical to the imperfect (que nous prenions, que vous preniez) — that is not a misprint but a feature of the mood; only five verbs escape it: soyons, ayons, fassions, puissions, sachions. Two-stem verbs (prendre, venir, boire, devoir, recevoir) use the ils stem for je/tu/il/ils and the nous stem for nous/vous: que je prenne but que nous prenions. A short list of very common verbs is simply irregular — être, avoir, aller, faire, pouvoir, savoir, vouloir, falloir — and since those are precisely the ones that come up in speech, learn them by heart from the table.

Use the subjunctive after: will and requests (vouloir que, souhaiter que, aimer que, demander que, exiger que, préférer que, tenir à ce que, s'attendre à ce que); necessity and evaluation (il faut que, il vaut mieux que, il est important / essentiel / normal / dommage que); emotion (je suis content / ravi / désolé / surpris que, ça m'énerve que); doubt and negated opinion (je ne pense pas que, je ne crois pas que, douter que); and after the conjunctions bien que, quoique (although), pour que, afin que (so that), avant que, jusqu'à ce que, sans que, à condition que, à moins que, as well as in quel que soit / quelle que soit. Two of these are false friends worth flagging: demander que is 'to ask that', not 'to demand', and s'attendre à ce que is 'to expect', not 'to attend'. After avant que, à moins que and de peur que you may meet the so-called ne explétif (avant que tu ne prennes ta décision) — it is not a negative, just careful style.

Now the exceptions that break the pattern. Espérer que takes the indicative: J'espère qu'il viendra — and here French and English line up neatly ("I hope he'll come"), which is exactly why the rule is easy to forget when its near-synonym souhaiter que demands the subjunctive. Penser que and croire que take the indicative in the affirmative, but usually the subjunctive when negated or inverted: Je ne pense pas qu'il vienne. Likewise il me semble que + indicative versus il semble que + subjunctive; and après que officially requires the indicative, even though native speakers routinely slip a subjunctive in anyway. Finally, remember that the présent du subjonctif covers present and future alike — there is no future subjunctive, so Il faut que tu partes serves for both "now" and "tomorrow".

One last thing English cannot show you: the exercises in this unit alternate between tu and vous, and that choice changes the ending you need (que tu envoies versus que vous envoyiez). English has a single "you", so you must make consciously a decision French speakers make automatically. Use vous with a recruiter, a client, a new manager, anyone noticeably older or more senior, and with any group; use tu with colleagues at your own level once someone has said on peut se tutoyer — the invitation normally comes from the senior person. In an interview you stay with vous from beginning to end, which is why Claire and Marta vouvoient each other throughout the dialogue; switching to tu unbidden reads as a small act of presumption rather than friendliness.

Relative pronouns: qui, que, dont, où and the compound forms (lequel, auquel, duquel)

Les pronoms relatifs simples et composés

Start with the mistake English speakers make before any other: English lets you delete the relative pronoun. "The flat I saw yesterday", "the person I spoke to", "the money he owes me" — all perfectly good English, all impossible in French. Every French relative clause needs its pronoun, with no exceptions: l'appartement QUE j'ai visité hier. And the second habit to unlearn is that English picks the pronoun by what the noun IS (who for people, which/that for things), whereas French picks it by what the pronoun DOES in its own clause. If a verb follows immediately and the pronoun is its subject, you use qui (le voisin qui habite au-dessus — "the neighbour who lives upstairs", but also la clé qui ouvre la porte, for a thing). If a new subject follows and the pronoun is the direct object, you use que (l'appartement que j'ai visité). So qui/que splits subject from object, not human from non-human.

Two mechanical checks are worth memorising. First, qui NEVER elides: you write qui il, qui elle — never *qu'il in this function — while que becomes qu' before a vowel or mute h (l'attestation qu'elle a signée). Second, the past participle agrees with a direct object placed before the verb, which is exactly what que does: les démarches que nous avons faiteS. English has nothing of the kind, so it is pure extra work — but it is often audible, not just spelling: faites, prises, mises, écrites all sound different from fait, pris, mis, écrit.

Dont replaces anything that would be introduced by de, and it is hard for anglophones because English splits that job across whose, of which, about which, of whom — or hides it entirely. Three uses. (1) Verbs and adjectives whose French complementation includes de: parler de (talk about), avoir besoin de (need — English takes no preposition at all), s'occuper de, se souvenir de, rêver de, ignorer l'existence de, être fier / content / responsable de. Hence le document dont j'ai besoin. Note ignorer in passing: it is a false friend meaning "to be unaware of", not "to ignore" someone. (2) Possession: le propriétaire dont le fils habite à Lyon = "the landlord whose son lives in Lyon". The trap here is that English "whose son" tempts you into *dont son fils — wrong. After dont, French uses the DEFINITE ARTICLE, never a possessive, because dont already carries the "whose". (3) Part of a whole: trois candidats, dont deux étrangers = "three applicants, two of them foreign".

Crucially, an English "about which / that … about" does not automatically give dont. What decides is the preposition the FRENCH verb demands, and English is a very poor guide to it. Penser À quelque chose → un problème AUQUEL je n'avais pas pensé (not dont). S'attendre À → le montant auquel je m'attendais, even though English "expect" takes no preposition. Conversely attendre is straightforwardly transitive — French has no "for" here — so "the receipt I'm waiting for" is simply la quittance que j'attends. Before you choose a relative pronoun, check what the French verb takes; never map the English preposition across.

Où covers place but, just as importantly, TIME: le jour où, l'année où, le moment où, l'époque où. English says "the day when I signed", so learners reach for quand — but quand is never a relative pronoun after a noun in French, and *le jour quand is a serious error. There are also d'où and par où: la ville d'où je viens ("the town I come from" — note that English strands the preposition at the end and French fronts it), le chemin par où il est passé.

The compound forms (lequel and family) go after a preposition, and here the English habit of stranding must be broken outright: "the agency I wrote to", "the scheme I heard about", "the form without which…" — French always puts the preposition first, never at the end: l'agence à laquelle j'ai écrit. These forms also agree in gender and number, something English simply does not do, so you have to know the noun's gender before you can pick the pronoun. They contract with à and de: à + lequel = auquel, de + lesquels = desquels, but à + laquelle stays à laquelle. Three practical rules: (1) preposition first, always; (2) for a PERSON, everyday French prefers qui after a preposition — la personne avec qui je travaille sounds far more natural than avec laquelle, which is kept for things and for formal register; (3) after prepositional phrases ending in de — à côté de, en face de, près de, au cours de, à cause de, au bout de — dont is banned and you must use duquel / de laquelle / desquels: l'immeuble à côté duquel j'habite. Finally, one place where French and English line up neatly: when the pronoun refers to a whole clause rather than a noun, French uses ce qui / ce que / ce dont exactly where English uses a comma plus "which" — Il a perdu son RIB, ce qui retarde tout ("which is holding everything up").

The conditional (conditionnel présent and conditionnel passé) and the three types of si-clause

Le conditionnel présent et le conditionnel passé ; les trois systèmes hypothétiques avec si

HOW IT IS BUILT. The conditionnel présent is the future stem plus the imparfait endings: -ais, -ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient. For regular verbs the stem is simply the infinitive (parler → je parlerais, finir → je finirais; -re verbs drop the final e: prendre → je prendrais). The irregular stems are EXACTLY the ones you already learnt for the futur simple: être → ser-, avoir → aur-, aller → ir-, faire → fer-, pouvoir → pourr-, devoir → devr-, vouloir → voudr-, savoir → saur-, venir → viendr-, voir → verr-, envoyer → enverr-, falloir → faudr-, valoir → vaudr-. So there is nothing new to memorise: one stem set serves both “will” and “would”, much as English builds both from the same root. Do watch the spelling, though: je parlerai (future, “I will speak”) and je parlerais (conditional, “I would speak”) sound all but identical in modern French, so on paper that single final -s carries the whole meaning.

WHAT THE CONDITIONNEL PRÉSENT DOES. Treat it as French “would” and four of its jobs will feel familiar straight away. (1) Politeness: je voudrais un rendez-vous (“I'd like an appointment”), pourriez-vous m'expliquer… ? (“could you explain…?”), ça vous dérangerait de… ? (“would you mind…?”). Je veux and pouvez-vous are not rude exactly, but at a reception desk they land as bluntly as “I want” and “can you” would in English. This is also where the tu/vous choice bites, and English gives you no instinct for it: the doctor and the patient in the dialogue use vous to each other from start to finish, because vous is obligatory with a professional you do not know socially, and it is the doctor's job — not the patient's — to propose tu if it ever changes. Reserve tu for friends, family, children, fellow students and colleagues you already drink coffee with; when in doubt, use vous and let the other person downgrade you. (2) Advice: à ta place, je consulterais; tu devrais dormir davantage; il faudrait faire une prise de sang. (3) Unconfirmed information — the one use with no English grammatical equivalent: le virus serait plus contagieux means “the virus is said to be / is reportedly more contagious”. French does with a verb tense what English does with an adverb (reportedly, allegedly, apparently), and every news bulletin runs on it. (4) Future in the past: il a dit qu'il viendrait (“he said he would come”), elle savait qu'elle guérirait vite — the same backshift you already perform in English without thinking.

CONDITIONNEL PASSÉ = the conditionnel présent of avoir or être plus the past participle: j'aurais consulté, tu aurais dû, elle serait allée, nous nous serions reposés. It maps one-to-one onto English “would have + past participle”, and the choice of auxiliary and the agreement rules are precisely those of the passé composé — so the être verbs still take être, and the participle after être still agrees with the subject (elle serait allée, with that -e English simply does not have). The meaning is something that did not happen: regret, reproach, a hypothesis about the past. J'aurais dû arrêter de fumer plus tôt (“I should have given up smoking sooner”), tu aurais pu m'appeler (“you could have called me”). Learn this asymmetry cold, because it is the single most persistent English-speaker error in the unit: English puts the perfect on the second verb (“should HAVE stopped”), French puts it on the first. So “I should have” = j'aurais dû + infinitive, never *je devrais avoir; “I could have” = j'aurais pu; “I would have liked” = j'aurais voulu / j'aurais aimé.

THE THREE SI-CLAUSES. These are your first, second and third conditionals, and the shapes line up almost perfectly. (1) Open, real hypothesis: si + présent → présent, futur simple or imperative — Si tu as de la fièvre, prends du paracétamol; Si vous continuez comme ça, vous tomberez malade. Exactly like English, both languages keep the future OUT of the if-clause (“if you have a temperature”, not “if you will have”). (2) Unreal or unlikely in the present or future: si + imparfait → conditionnel présent — Si j'avais le temps, j'irais à la piscine tous les matins (“If I had the time, I'd go to the pool every morning”): French imparfait where English uses the simple past, French conditional where English uses “would”. (3) Unreal in the past, the tense of regret: si + plus-que-parfait → conditionnel passé — Si j'avais su, j'aurais consulté plus tôt (“If I had known, I'd have seen a doctor sooner”): pluperfect against pluperfect, “would have” against conditionnel passé. There is also a very common mixed type — past cause, present consequence: Si j'avais arrêté de fumer il y a dix ans, je ne serais pas essoufflé aujourd'hui. Either clause may come first, and the comma is written only when the si-clause opens the sentence. One point where the languages part company: French has no counterpart of the fossilised English subjunctive “if I were you” — it just uses the imparfait, si j'étais toi, and more idiomatically à ta place.

WHERE ENGLISH HELPS AND WHERE IT TRAPS YOU. Take the free lunch first: the conditional is “would”, the conditionnel passé is “would have”, the si-clauses are your three conditionals, and the medical vocabulary of this unit is overwhelmingly Latinate — symptôme, infection virale, consultation, ausculter, s'hydrater, aggraver, prescrire all decode on sight. Spend your effort on the handful of places where the two systems diverge. (a) Never put a conditionnel or a futur after si in a hypothesis. Police this one hard, because colloquial English — North American English especially — tolerates “if I would have known” and “if you'll be free tomorrow”, and that habit transfers straight into French: si je pouvais, not *si je pourrais; si tu as le temps, not *si tu auras; si j'avais su, not *si j'aurais su. (b) The exception: when si means “whether” (an indirect question), the future and the conditional are perfectly correct — je me demande si ça ira, il ne savait pas s'il guérirait. Test it by substituting “whether” in English; if “whether” works, si is free. (c) English “would” is ambiguous in a way French is not: “When I was a student I would go swimming every day” is a past habit, not a hypothesis, and French uses the imparfait — quand j'étais étudiant, j'allais nager tous les jours, never *j'irais. (d) Elision: si + il → s'il, but si + elle stays si elle. (e) au cas où takes a conditional where English uses a present tense: prends ta carte Vitale au cas où il faudrait aller aux urgences (“in case you have to go to A&E”). (f) Il faudrait que… triggers the subjunctive: il faudrait que tu ailles voir un médecin, not *que tu vas. English has no living subjunctive left — “it is essential that he go” survives only in formal writing — so nothing in your ear will warn you here. Treat il faut que / il faudrait que as a fixed trigger, learn the form separately, and check it on paper rather than trusting instinct.

Reported speech and the sequence of tenses

Le discours indirect et la concordance des temps

Start with the good news, because it is bigger than the bad news: English already does this. "He says he is ill" becomes "He said he was ill"; "I'll call you" becomes "He said he would call me". French backshifts for exactly the same reason and in exactly the same places, so you are not learning a new concept — only new forms. What English does that French forbids is dropping the conjunction: we say "He said he had checked", but French can never omit que, and it must repeat it before every reported clause — Il a dit qu'il était en retard et QU'il publierait le papier le soir même. Leaving out that second qu' is the most common anglophone slip in this whole area.

The machinery is three pairs, and each maps onto something you already say in English: présent → imparfait ("is" → "was"), passé composé → plus-que-parfait ("has checked / checked" → "had checked"), futur simple → conditionnel présent ("will" → "would"); and, one step further, futur antérieur → conditionnel passé ("will have finished" → "would have finished"). The conditionnel here carries no hypothetical meaning at all — it is simply the future seen from a point in the past, which is precisely the job English gives to "would". Equally important is what does not move: imparfait, plus-que-parfait, conditionnel and subjonctif stay put, because they have nowhere further back to go. And if the reporting verb is in the present (Il dit que…, Elle affirme que…), nothing shifts — again as in English.

Questions are where French stops resembling English. A yes/no question is introduced by SI, never by que and never with est-ce que: « Tu as recoupé l'info ? » → Il m'a demandé SI j'avais recoupé l'info. Conveniently, English "if/whether" behaves the same way, but remember that this si means "whether", not conditional "if". French has no do-support either, so the "did" of "He asked me if I did check" has no equivalent to translate. The real trap is "what", which English uses for both subject and object while French splits it in two: « Qu'est-ce qui… ? » → CE QUI (subject: Il voulait savoir ce qui s'était passé), « Qu'est-ce que… ? » → CE QUE (object: Elle a demandé ce que j'en pensais). All the other question words — qui, quand, où, pourquoi, comment, combien, quel — stay as they are; you simply drop est-ce que and the inversion.

Orders behave the way you would expect: the imperative becomes DE + infinitive, matching English "he told me to check my sources". In the negative, both halves of ne pas sit together in front of the infinitive: « Ne publie pas ! » → Il m'a dit DE NE PAS publier. Then reset the coordinates of the utterance, exactly as you do in English. Pronouns and possessives move (« J'ai perdu mes notes » → Il a dit qu'IL avait perdu SES notes — and note that ses says nothing about the owner's gender, only about the thing owned), and so do time and place markers: aujourd'hui → ce jour-là, hier → la veille, avant-hier → l'avant-veille, demain → le lendemain, après-demain → le surlendemain, maintenant → à ce moment-là / alors, il y a deux jours → deux jours plus tôt (auparavant), la semaine prochaine → la semaine suivante, la semaine dernière → la semaine précédente, ici → là.

Now the vocabulary, where anglophones lose the most marks. French journalism runs on reporting verbs that carry a judgement — affirmer, assurer, préciser, ajouter, souligner, rappeler, nier, démentir, avouer, reconnaître, reprocher, s'étonner — and several of them are false friends. Prétendre means "to claim", with a strong hint that the claim is unfounded; "to pretend" is faire semblant. Prévenir and avertir mean "to warn", never "to prevent" (that is empêcher). Démentir is to issue an official denial and has nothing to do with dementia. Assister à means "to attend", not "to assist"; a stagiaire attends the briefing, she does not help with it. Watch the countability too: French une information is one item of news and des informations are news items, where English "information" cannot be counted at all. Finally, some of these verbs take an infinitive rather than que: Il a nié AVOIR lancé la rumeur ; Elle a reconnu S'ÊTRE trompée — where that final -e is a past participle agreeing with a female speaker, an agreement English has no way of hearing, so you have to build the habit deliberately.

Two last points. The subjonctif inside reported speech simply stays in the present (Il a dit qu'il doutait que ce SOIT vrai): modern spoken and journalistic French no longer uses the imparfait du subjonctif, so there is nothing extra to learn — and since English has almost no living subjunctive left, do not go looking for an English form to copy; just remember that douter que, il faut que and their relatives keep their subjonctif untouched by the backshift. And when the reported fact is still true or is a general truth, contemporary French allows you to skip the shift altogether — Il a dit que la Terre TOURNE autour du Soleil is perfectly normal, exactly as English allows "He said the Earth goes round the Sun". In a news piece or an exam, though, apply the full concordance consistently: it is never wrong, and inconsistency is.

Gérondif, participe présent and adjectif verbal — three -ant forms you have to keep apart

Le gérondif, le participe présent et l'adjectif verbal

All three forms look identical and are built identically: take the verb in the nous form of the present tense, cut off -ons and add -ant. Nous polluons → polluant, nous finissons → finissant, nous prenons → prenant, nous faisons → faisant. There are exactly three irregulars: être → étant, avoir → ayant, savoir → sachant. The difference between the three is therefore not in how they are made but in what job they do — and the job decides both the spelling and whether the word agrees with anything. This is the heart of the problem for an English speaker: English has a single -ing form covering all three jobs at once (“polluting factories”, “by polluting the river”, “very polluting”), so your own language has never once forced you to choose. In French you must choose every time.

The GÉRONDIF is always « en + -ant » and always refers back to the SUBJECT of the main clause. It expresses simultaneity (Je lis en mangeant — I read while eating), means or method (On réduit ses factures en isolant sa maison — you cut your bills by insulating your house), condition (En triant mieux, on diviserait le volume de nos ordures — if we sorted better...), or, with « tout », concession and contrast (Tout en se disant écologiste, il roule en SUV = while calling himself an environmentalist, he drives an SUV). Here is the single biggest anglophone trap in this unit: English cheerfully puts -ing after any preposition, French does not. « En » is the ONLY French preposition that takes the -ant form. After every other one you need an infinitive: sans dire un mot (without saying a word), avant de partir (before leaving), au lieu de protester (instead of protesting), pour réduire ses émissions (in order to reduce its emissions). « Après » deserves its own warning: “after insulating the walls” is après avoir isolé les murs — a past infinitive, never *après isolant.

Two more habits to unlearn. First, the subject rule. “Walking home, I heard the phone ring” goes straight across (En rentrant chez moi, j'ai entendu le téléphone sonner), but the dangling participle that English tolerates in speech — “Walking home, the phone rang” — is flatly wrong in French; you have to rebuild the sentence: Alors que je rentrais chez moi, le téléphone a sonné. Second, after most French verbs there is no -ant at all where English uses -ing: “I like cycling” = J'aime faire du vélo, “I stopped driving” = J'ai arrêté de conduire, “he carries on flying” = il continue de prendre l'avion. The -ing form is not a French building block; the infinitive is.

The PARTICIPE PRÉSENT is the same form WITHOUT « en », and it belongs to written register: administrative, legal, journalistic. Its commonest job is to compress a relative clause with « qui »: les entreprises qui ne respectent pas les quotas → les entreprises ne respectant pas les quotas (“companies failing to meet the quotas” — English does exactly the same thing, which makes this structure easy to acquire). It is INVARIABLE, even when it describes a feminine or plural noun, because it keeps its verbal force: it has an object, an adverb or a negation (une usine polluant la rivière — no -e!). The participe présent can also carry its own subject and form a proposition participiale expressing cause: Le train étant annulé, nous avons pris le covoiturage. English has the same absolute construction (“The train being cancelled, we...”), though it sounds far more formal in English than in French. It also turns up after verbs of perception: J'ai vu des militants bloquant la route.

The ADJECTIF VERBAL, by contrast, is a genuine adjective: it AGREES in gender and number (des gaz polluants, des mesures contraignantes, une politique payante), it can be preceded by « très / assez / plutôt » and it can follow être. Since English adjectives never agree with anything, this is a step you have to add consciously — the missing -e or -s is the classic anglophone slip. The practical test is simple: if the form has an object, an adverb or a negation, i.e. it can be unpacked into « qui + verb », it is a participe présent and takes no endings; if it describes a lasting quality and you could put « très » in front of it, it is an adjectif verbal and must agree. Compare: Ces chiffres, alarmant les scientifiques, ont relancé le débat (what are they doing? = participe présent) versus Ces chiffres sont très alarmants (what are they like? = adjectif verbal).

Finally, something even the French themselves get wrong: a handful of verbs have TWO DIFFERENT SPELLINGS — one for the verbal form, another for the adjective (see the table). You say en convainquant les élus, but un discours convaincant; les industriels négligeant les normes, but un maire négligent; les personnes résidant en ZFE, but les résidents du quartier. Notice that the adjectives are precisely the forms an English speaker half-recognises — convincing, negligent, resident, different, precedent — which is a useful anchor: when the French word looks like its English cousin, you are almost certainly holding the adjective. But do not let the family resemblance lull you: one of these -ant forms is a false friend. « Prétendant » (in the exercises: Tout en prétendant lutter contre le gaspillage...) means claiming, asserting — not pretending. To pretend is faire semblant de. The choice of spelling, meanwhile, is not decoration; it signals which grammatical category the word belongs to, and DELF/DALF examiners test it enthusiastically.

The plus-que-parfait and expressing anteriority. Passé composé vs imparfait vs plus-que-parfait

Le plus-que-parfait et l'expression de l'antériorité

Start with the good news, because for an English speaker this is one of the cheapest tenses in French. The plus-que-parfait (PQP) is the past behind the past, and it lines up almost exactly with the English past perfect: j'avais parlé = I had spoken, elle était partie = she had left. You build it with the imparfait of the auxiliary (avoir or être) plus the past participle. Everything you already do instinctively in English — pushing an event one step further back than the main narrative — transfers straight across. What English never asks of you is the two extra decisions French adds: which auxiliary, and whether the participle agrees.

Those two decisions work exactly as they do in the passé composé. Être goes with the verbs of movement and change of state (the DR & MRS VANDERTRAMP list) and with every reflexive verb, and the participle then agrees with the subject: elle était partie, nous nous étions levés. Avoir goes with everything else, and there the participle agrees only with a direct object placed BEFORE the verb: les notes qu'il avait obtenues. English has no agreement system whatsoever, so this will never come to you by ear — it has to be a deliberate check when you proofread, especially after qui/que and after a preceding pronoun.

Where the two languages genuinely march together, exploit it. Adverbs sit in the same slot in both: il avait déjà commencé = he had already started; elle n'avait jamais vécu à l'étranger = she had never lived abroad. Reported speech backshifts the same way: 'I handed in my dissertation' → she said she HAD handed in her dissertation → Elle a dit qu'elle avait rendu son mémoire. And the third conditional is a near word-for-word match: Si j'avais su que le master était aussi dense, j'aurais pris une année de césure = If I had known the master's was this heavy, I would have taken a gap year. The one trap here is the colloquial American 'If I would have known' — translate that shape literally and you produce «si j'aurais su», which is the single most stigmatised mistake in the language. After si, never a conditional.

Now the mismatches. First, French has no progressive, so English past perfect continuous collapses into a plain PQP: 'we had been revising all night' = nous avions révisé toute la nuit. Second, and more dangerous: 'had just done something' is NOT a plus-que-parfait in French. It is venir de in the imparfait — le cours venait de commencer = the lecture had just started. Third, French holds on to the PQP in places where spoken English happily drops it: after quand, lorsque, comme, parce que, une fois que, when the main clause is in the passé composé or imparfait, French wants the earlier event explicitly marked — Une fois qu'il avait validé tous ses crédits, il a pu partir. English tolerates 'Once he validated all his credits, he could leave'; French does not.

The real difficulty for an anglophone is not the PQP itself but the layer underneath it, because one English past tense fans out into two French ones. Imparfait paints the backdrop: description, state, ongoing situation, habit (il pleuvait, j'étais épuisé, chaque matin il prenait le bus — note that 'used to' and 'would' in the habitual sense both land here). Passé composé moves the story forward, one completed event after another (je suis entré, j'ai vu, j'ai compris). Plus-que-parfait steps back to explain what had happened even earlier (j'étais épuisé parce que j'avais révisé toute la nuit). A quick test: if the English version tolerates 'had' + participle, or if you could insert 'beforehand' / 'by then' / 'already', you almost certainly need the PQP.

Three details to file away. Instead of the PQP you can use the past infinitive, but only when both verbs share a subject: Après avoir rendu son mémoire, il est parti en vacances (= after handing in his dissertation). A bare exclamation of regret takes the PQP on its own: Si seulement j'avais compris plus tôt ! And when the PQP feeds a purpose clause, French switches to the subjunctive where English simply uses an infinitive — il m'a fallu six mois pour que tout soit reconnu = it took me six months to get everything recognised. English has no living subjunctive to lean on, so pour que, bien que and avant que have to be memorised as triggers rather than felt.

Giving your opinion: mise en relief, neutral pronouns and the subjunctive after a negated opinion

Donner son avis : la mise en relief, les pronoms neutres et le subjonctif après une opinion niée

1. MISE EN RELIEF: c'est… qui / c'est… que. Here English gives you a head start. Where French uses this frame, English does exactly the same thing — “It was the cinematography that got me” — so the cleft sentence is already in your grammar. The difference is that English has a second option French does not: you can simply hit a word with your voice (“The CINEMATOGRAPHY got me”, “The cinematography got ME”). French word order is rigid (subject – verb – object) and French sentence stress falls at the end of the group, so it cannot highlight by voice alone; the frame is not stylish decoration, it is the only tool available. The choice is mechanical: c'est + SUBJECT + qui, c'est + ANYTHING ELSE (object, adverbial, prepositional phrase) + que. If the highlighted element carries a preposition, the preposition goes inside the frame: C'est à ce concert que je pense ; C'est de ce roman que tout le monde parle — note that English strands the preposition at the end (“That's the concert I'm thinking about”), which is exactly what French forbids.

2. THE AGREEMENT TRAP AFTER “qui”. This one is invisible to English speakers, so learn it as a rule rather than trusting your ear: after qui the verb agrees with the highlighted element, not with qui itself. C'est moi qui ai raison (never *qui a raison), C'est nous qui avons choisi, C'est vous qui êtes en retard, C'est toi qui choisis. English pushes you the other way — “It's me who HAS booked the seats” is perfectly normal English, and it is the exact mistake French punishes. In the plural, careful writing uses Ce sont mes amis qui ont réservé, while everyday speech happily says C'est mes amis… Two more agreements to watch, because English has none at all: the past participle agrees with a preceding direct object (C'est la photo qui m'a scotchée when the speaker is a woman) and adjectives agree with their noun (je suis restée sur ma faim).

3. THE SECOND FRAME: ce qui / ce que / ce dont / ce à quoi…, c'est… English covers all four of these with the single word “what” (“What I liked…”, “What I need…”, “What I wasn't expecting…”), which is why learners default to ce que for everything. In French the choice depends only on the job the word does in the clause that follows: ce qui = subject (Ce qui m'a plu, c'est la musique), ce que = direct object (Ce que je retiens, c'est la fin), ce dont with verbs built on de — parler de, avoir besoin de, avoir envie de, se souvenir de (Ce dont j'ai envie, c'est d'un bon polar), ce à quoi with verbs built on à — penser à, s'attendre à, tenir à (Ce à quoi je ne m'attendais pas, c'est à cette fin). And the detail nobody remembers: the preposition comes back after the comma. English says “What I need is a good thriller” with nothing before “a good thriller”; French says c'est D'un bon polar, c'est À cette fin.

4. NEUTRAL PRONOUNS: le, en, y, ça. English answers a question by repeating the auxiliary and dropping everything else (“Are you free on Saturday?” – “Yes, I am.” / “He's already left.” – “Yes, I know.”). French cannot leave that hole: it plugs it with a short pronoun pointing back at the whole idea. LE replaces a whole clause or a predicate: — Il est déjà parti ? — Oui, je le sais. ; — Tu es libre samedi ? — Oui, je le suis. EN replaces “de + something”: J'en suis sûr ; On en a beaucoup parlé ; J'en suis à la moitié (“I'm halfway through it”). Y replaces “à + something”: J'y pense ; Je ne m'y attendais pas ; Tu y vas ? Two refinements: after savoir, a bare “Oui, je sais” is completely natural in speech, but in the negative the pronoun comes back (Non, je ne le savais pas); and after a preposition or at the end of a sentence you use ça instead — Je n'y avais pas pensé, but Je ne m'attendais pas à ça. Note in passing that “on” in this unit maps neatly onto English “you/we/one” (on ne décroche pas une seconde = “you don't switch off for a second”), so use it freely.

5. SUBJONCTIF AFTER A NEGATED OPINION OR IN A QUESTION. English has no living subjunctive — the last fossils are “If I were you” and “I insist that he be present” — so do not try to feel this mood; apply it as a trigger rule. Verbs and phrases of opinion (penser, croire, trouver, être sûr/certain, il est évident/vrai/clair que) take the indicative when affirmative: Je pense que c'est réussi. Negate them, or turn them into an inverted question, and the speaker suspends the truth of what follows — subjunctive: Je ne pense pas que ce soit réussi ; Je ne trouve pas que le film vaille le coup ; Croyez-vous que ce film fasse date ? Notice that English negates in the same place (“I don't think it's any good” rather than “I think it isn't”), so the sentence shape is familiar; only the verb form changes. Relaxed speech does use the indicative (“Je pense pas que c'est terrible”), but in writing, in an exam and in a review, use the subjunctive. One exception worth memorising: affirmative espérer NEVER takes the subjunctive (J'espère qu'il viendra), because it expresses hope, not doubt.

6. TWO LAST TRAPS, AND THE FAUX AMIS OF THIS UNIT. (a) If the action in the subordinate clause happened before the opinion, use the subjonctif passé: Je ne suis pas sûre qu'ils aient vu le même film — and remember there is no future subjunctive: for the future you still use the present, Je ne crois pas qu'il vienne demain. (b) The very French frame for disagreeing politely: ce n'est pas que + SUBJUNCTIVE, c'est que + INDICATIVE — Ce n'est pas que le programme me déplaise, c'est que je n'ai pas le temps. Finally, this topic is a minefield of false friends: assister à un concert = to attend one, never to assist; la nouvelle = a short story, not a novel (that is le roman); le scénario = a screenplay, not a hypothetical scenario; l'intrigue = the plot, not scheming; le générique = the credits, nothing generic; la séance = a screening or a session, not a séance; l'éditeur = the publisher, while an editor is le rédacteur; rester sur sa faim = to be left wanting, not to rest; la librairie = a bookshop, whereas a library is la bibliothèque. Where French and English do line up — the whole Latinate layer (le réalisateur, la critique, le spectacle, prétentieux) and the compound past that looks like “have + participle” — exploit the resemblance shamelessly; just check the gender and the agreements it hides.

The passive and its substitutes: « on » and the pronominal form

Le passif et ses substituts : « on » et la forme pronominale de sens passif

**How it is built — and the good news first.** French être + past participle lines up almost one-for-one with English be + past participle, so the machinery is already familiar: *L'outil est déployé* = “the tool is deployed”. The tense sits on être, never on the participle: *est déployé* (is being rolled out), *a été déployé* (was/has been rolled out), *sera déployé* (will be rolled out), *serait déployé* (would be rolled out). The bad news is the one thing English has no equivalent of: the participle **agrees in gender and number with the subject** — *La décision a été prise*, *Les données sont stockées*, *Elle a été prévenue*. Nothing in your English draft will remind you to do this, so it has to become a deliberate final check. Second trap: in the passé composé you get two participles in a row, *a été prise*, and anglophones routinely drop “été” because English “was taken” only has two pieces. Count the three: a (tense) + été (passive) + prise (the verb, agreeing).

**Naming the agent (le complément d'agent).** The default is **par**, exactly where English uses “by”: *Le rapport a été rédigé par Sonia*. But after verbs of feeling, state or accompaniment (respecter, aimer, apprécier, estimer, connaître, accompagner, suivre, entourer, précéder) French prefers **de**: *Elle est respectée de toute l'équipe*, *un dossier accompagné de trois annexes*. English has one preposition here and French has two, so this is a choice you have to make consciously. More often than not, though, French simply leaves the agent out altogether — an agentless passive is normal, good French, not an evasion.

**The big one: French only passivises DIRECT objects.** English is unusually generous — it lets an indirect object become the subject: “I was told”, “we were asked”, “she was refused access”, “he was given a laptop”, “the team was sent the minutes”. Not one of these has a French passive equivalent, because dire à, demander à, refuser à, donner à, envoyer à, conseiller à, permettre à, téléphoner à all govern an indirect object. The asterisk marks impossible French: *je suis dit, *il est téléphoné, *on m'est demandé, *elle est refusée l'accès. The fix is always the same: **On m'a dit…, On nous a demandé…, On lui a refusé…** Train the reflex — whenever your English sentence begins “I was / we were / she was” with a verb that takes à quelqu'un in French, switch to on. Three verbs are worth memorising as exceptions that do allow a passive: obéir, désobéir and pardonner (*Vous serez pardonné*).

**« On » — the main substitute for the passive.** English “one” is stiff and faintly Edwardian; French « on » is nothing of the kind. It is the ordinary spoken subject and covers “we”, “you”, “they”, “people” and “someone” at once, which is why French reaches for it exactly where English reaches for an agentless passive: *On a annoncé la nouvelle ce matin* is the natural way to say “the news was announced this morning”. Both versions are correct; *La nouvelle a été annoncée* is the more formal, written one, at home in official notices and work emails — which is precisely the register of this unit. One agreement quirk: the verb after on is third-person singular, but adjectives and participles agree with whoever on actually refers to: *On est tous fatigués*, *On a été prévenues*. In everyday speech on also simply replaces nous (*on y va*, not *nous y allons*).

**The pronominal passive, and two constructions English already owns.** *Se* + verb corresponds to the English middle voice, which anglophones use without thinking: *Ce logiciel s'installe en deux clics* = “this software installs in two clicks”; *Ces données ne se conservent pas plus de trente jours* = “this data doesn't keep for more than thirty days”; *Ça ne se dit plus* = “people just don't say that any more”. The subject is normally inanimate and you are describing a property, a rule or a habit — not a one-off event with a known agent. At B2, two further constructions do a lot of work: **se faire + infinitive** (*Il s'est fait pirater son compte*) and **se voir + infinitive** (*Elle s'est vu refuser l'accès*). These are the French get-passive: “he got his account hacked”, “she got refused access” — same nuance of something happening to you, often unpleasantly. Better still, se voir rescues exactly those indirect-object sentences the ordinary passive cannot handle. In both, the participle stays **invariable**: “fait” never agrees before an infinitive, and in *s'est vu refuser* the “se” is an indirect object (something was refused to her), so nothing agrees there either.

**Faux amis in this unit — check every one.** *la direction* = management, the board (not “direction”); *former les équipes* = to train the teams, and *une formation* = a training course (never “formation”); *réclamer* = to call for, to demand (not “reclaim”), while *demander* = to ask, not “to demand” (that is exiger); *un dispositif* = a system, scheme or set of measures, only occasionally a physical device; *un contrôle* = a check or inspection, not “control”; *rester* = to stay, to remain, never “to rest” (se reposer) — *je resterai méfiante*, *je reste à votre disposition*; *la sauvegarde* looks like “safeguard” but means a backup; *chiffrer* = to encrypt and also to cost out, to put a figure on; *assurer* = to assure, but also to insure and to see to something (*assurer le suivi*); *un journal* = a log or a newspaper, never a personal journal (that is un journal intime); *une note* here is a memo, a short written brief; *un poste* = a workstation or a job, not a postal item; *le trimestre* = the business quarter, not a trimester; *un salarié* = an employee. Where French and English genuinely agree, exploit it shamelessly: déployer/deploy, interface, surveillance, dispositif, prestataire, données/data, RGPD/GDPR (literally the same regulation) and the whole Latinate half of the vocabulary list will cost you almost nothing to learn.

Cause, consequence, purpose and concession

Cause, conséquence, but et concession

CAUSE. English gets by with “because / since / as / for”, and “since” is ambiguous between time and reason. French splits the job four ways and the choice is not free. “Parce que” answers the question « pourquoi ? » head-on, carries new information, and is the only one that can stand alone (« Pourquoi ? — Parce que ! »). “Car” is the exact counterpart of literary English “for”: it sits after a comma, inside the sentence, and NEVER opens one. “Puisque” is “seeing as / since you already know” — a reason your listener has already accepted, which you now use as leverage (« Puisque tu es au courant, agis »). “Comme” is causal “as” and only ever opens the sentence (« Comme la réunion a duré trois heures… »). With a noun the trap is different and it catches anglophones badly: English “because of” is emotionally neutral, French forces you to take sides. “À cause de” means the outcome was bad, “grâce à” that it was good (it maps neatly onto “thanks to”), and “en raison de / du fait de” is the neutral, official option. So *à cause de ton aide reads as an accusation, not a thank-you.

CONSEQUENCE. In speech you will hear “donc”, “alors” and the ubiquitous “du coup” (colloquial but everywhere). Watch the word order: “donc” often slips inside the verb group where English keeps “so” at the front — « Il est donc parti » behaves like “He therefore left” rather than “So he left”. The formal set is “par conséquent”, “c'est pourquoi” and “d'où + noun”, which is a gift: it works exactly like English “hence + noun” (« d'où l'intérêt de cette réforme » = “hence the interest of this reform”). Consequence caused by sheer intensity uses “si bien que” and “de sorte que” + INDICATIVE, and the pairs “si… que” / “tellement… que”, which line up with English “so… that”. One difference matters: English “so that” is ambiguous between result (“he shouted, so that everyone heard”) and purpose (“so that everyone could hear”). French removes the ambiguity with mood — “de sorte que” + indicative = result that actually happened, “de sorte que” + subjunctive = intended purpose.

PURPOSE. Here English is your ally, so use it. English already distinguishes “I'm calling to explain” (same subject) from “I'm calling so that you understand” (subject changes), and French draws the line in precisely the same place: same subject → “pour / afin de / en vue de” + infinitive; two different subjects → “pour que / afin que” + SUBJUNCTIVE. « Je t'appelle pour t'expliquer la situation » versus « Je t'appelle pour que tu comprennes la situation ». The only genuinely new work is the mood, since *Je t'appelle pour que je t'explique is ungrammatical, exactly as “I'm calling so that I explain” is odd in English. Two calques to avoid: the English “for you to understand” cannot become *pour toi comprendre or *pour vous de comprendre — it must be a pour que clause. Negative purpose: with one subject, “pour ne pas + infinitive”, both halves of the negation sitting together BEFORE the infinitive (“so as not to…”); with two, “de peur que / de crainte que” + subjunctive, usually with the ne explétif, a decorative “ne” that is not a negation and has no English equivalent at all — ignore it when reading, produce it when writing formally.

CONCESSION, and what to do about the subjunctive. “Bien que” and “quoique” take the subjunctive, without exception in careful French. English will give you no help here, because our own subjunctive survives only in fossils (“if I were you”, “I insist that he be present”, “be that as it may”) and “although he has” is plain indicative. So do not hunt for a meaning in the French subjunctive after these conjunctions: treat it as a mechanical reflex fired by the trigger word, and drill the five irregulars you will actually need — être → soit, avoir → ait, pouvoir → puisse, savoir → sache, faire → fasse. Three further points. “Quoique” (one word, “although”) is not “quoi que” (two words, “whatever”: « quoi qu'il dise »). “Malgré” is a preposition and takes a noun only — which is the same restriction as English “despite” (“despite the rain”, never *“despite it rained”), so let the English rule guide you and avoid “malgré que”. And “même si”, despite its concessive sense, takes the INDICATIVE and never the subjunctive — again matching “even if / even though”. Alongside these come the adverbs “pourtant”, “cependant”, “néanmoins”, “toutefois” (written) and “quand même” (spoken). Finally, learn “avoir beau + infinitive” as a block, because English has no matching structure: « Il a beau insister… » = “however much he insists…” / “for all his insisting…” / “he may well insist, but…”.

REGISTER, and tu or vous. In a debate, an oral exam or a work email, flag your logical joins with the formal set: “étant donné que”, “dans la mesure où”, “du fait de”, “par conséquent”, “néanmoins”, “en revanche”. Among friends the same functions fall to “parce que”, “du coup”, “quand même”, “en fait”. Mixing the two — “du coup” in a letter to the town hall, “néanmoins” over a beer — sounds odder than a small grammatical slip, and B2 examiners notice. The same social calibration runs through the pronouns, where English gives you no practice at all because we have only one “you”. In this unit's dialogue, Camille's « Vous avez suivi le débat ? » is plural vous addressed to two friends, while Idriss's « tu ne peux pas comparer » is singular tu between friends — the same form, two different jobs. The working rule: vous for strangers, officials, shopkeepers, anyone older you do not know, and all professional email; tu with friends, family, fellow students, and colleagues at your own level. Inside an association people usually switch fast, but wait to be offered it (« On peut se tutoyer ? »). Getting it wrong is not a grammar mistake, it is a social one, and it is far more audible.

FALSE FRIENDS IN THIS UNIT. English-French cognates are a genuine shortcut for the abstract vocabulary of politics — abstention, mandat, inégalités, revendication, association all mean roughly what they look like — but this unit is thick with traps. Un syndicat is a trade union, not a syndicate. Une manifestation is a street demonstration, not a manifestation of something. L'engagement is commitment to a cause, never an engagement to marry (les fiançailles) or a diary appointment (un rendez-vous). Une urne is a ballot box, not a funerary urn. Le scrutin has nothing to do with scrutiny. In the dialogue, « on nous demande gentiment de nous taire » means we are politely ASKED, not demanded (demander = to ask; to demand is exiger); « plus d'un électeur sur deux reste chez lui » means he STAYS at home, not rests; and « personne n'écoutait personne » is “nobody was listening to anybody” — personne as a bare pronoun is a negative, not “a person”. Two more you will reach for in the final task even though they are not in the dialogue: actuellement means “currently”, not “actually” (that is en fait/en réalité), and éventuellement means “possibly, if need be”, not “eventually” (that is finalement). Where French really does align — grâce à / thanks to, d'où / hence, pour vs pour que / to vs so that, the compound past, on ≈ an impersonal “we/one” — lean on it hard, and spend the effort you save on gender: le scrutin, le mandat, le sondage are masculine, la loi, l'urne, l'abstention feminine, and the agreements that follow (« la loi a été adoptée », « la journaliste l'a posée ») have no equivalent in English to fall back on.

The futur simple, the futur antérieur and time conjunctions (quand, dès que, une fois que)

Le futur simple, le futur antérieur et les conjonctions de temps

FUTUR SIMPLE is built on the infinitive plus the present-tense endings of avoir: -ai, -as, -a, -ons, -ez, -ont (je parlerai, tu finiras, il partira). Verbs in -re drop the final -e: prendre → je prendrai, vendre → je vendrai. The good news for an English speaker is that the meaning maps almost one-to-one onto "will + verb", and that the futur proche (aller + infinitive) matches "going to" just as neatly. The bad news is that French marks the future with an ending rather than an auxiliary, so there is a stem to learn: the irregular stems in the table below have to be memorised, and verbs of the acheter / lever / prélever / appeler type keep their è or their doubled consonant right through the future (j'achèterai, je prélèverai, j'appellerai), unlike the present, where only some persons change. Note also that French has no aspectual pair ("I will be paying" vs "I will pay"): one futur simple covers both, and anything more precise comes from the context, an adverb, or the futur antérieur.

FUTUR ANTÉRIEUR = futur simple of avoir or être + past participle: j'aurai payé, nous serons partis, elle se sera trompée. This is the future perfect, and in its main use it behaves exactly like English "will have paid": a future action completed before another future action — "Je te rembourserai quand j'aurai touché mon salaire" (salary first, repayment second). Two things have no English counterpart. First, the choice of auxiliary (être with verbs of movement and all reflexives) and the agreement of the participle with a preceding direct object: la facture que j'aurai reçue. English participles never agree with anything, so this is pure extra work and a reliable source of lost marks. Second, French uses the futur antérieur for a SUPPOSITION about the past: "Il aura oublié de résilier son abonnement" does not mean "he will have forgotten" but "he must have forgotten / he's probably forgotten". English reaches for "must have" here; recognise the French pattern in the dialogue and in exercise 8 rather than trying to translate it word for word.

TIME CONJUNCTIONS — this is where anglophones lose most points. After quand, lorsque, dès que, aussitôt que, une fois que, après que, tant que, à mesure que, if the sentence is about the future, French REQUIRES a future tense (futur simple or futur antérieur). English does the opposite and puts a present tense there: "as soon as I get my salary, I'll pay you back". Transferring that habit produces the classic error *"Dès que je reçois mon salaire, je te rembourserai"; the correct sentence is "Dès que j'aurai reçu mon salaire, je te rembourserai". Train yourself to hear "as soon as I HAVE received" in your head — that English form points at the right French tense. Two riders. Après que, whatever you hear in the street, takes the indicative ("après que le technicien sera passé"), whereas avant que, jusqu'à ce que and en attendant que take the subjunctive and never a future tense ("avant que le délai (ne) soit écoulé"). And conditional si is the one place where French agrees with English: no future after si — "Si tu es à découvert, la banque prélèvera des frais", exactly like "if you are overdrawn…".

CHOOSING between futur simple and futur antérieur after quand / dès que / une fois que: ask whether the subordinate action has to FINISH before the main one starts. If it does, use the futur antérieur — "Dès que le technicien aura établi son diagnostic, nous vous rappellerons". If the two situations are simultaneous, or the subordinate clause describes a state, the futur simple is enough — "Vous recevrez un mail dès que le dossier sera enregistré", "Quand tu seras à la banque, demande un RIB". Learn separately the pattern tant que + ne… pas + futur antérieur, which is how French says English "until": "Tant que je n'aurai pas été remboursée, je ne rendrai pas l'appareil" = "Until I've been refunded, I'm not giving the appliance back". Note that a literal *jusqu'à ce que here would force the subjunctive and sound wrong. In casual speech the futur proche largely replaces the futur simple for immediate plans, but in writing — a complaint, a contract, an email to your bank — and after time conjunctions, the futur simple and futur antérieur are what is used and what examiners expect.

REGISTER AND FALSE FRIENDS. Watch the pronouns in the dialogue: Sylvie and the adviser use vous to each other (strangers in a commercial setting — vous is obligatory and stays obligatory for the whole exchange), while Karim uses tu to Sylvie because they are friends. English has no such switch, so the safe rule is: use vous with anyone you are not on first-name terms with, and let the French person offer "on peut se tutoyer" first. Then the traps this unit is stuffed with. Un délai is a deadline or a timeframe, NOT a delay (that is un retard) — "sous quel délai ?" means "within what timeframe?". Prévenir means to warn or notify, not to prevent (empêcher). Une réclamation is a complaint or claim, nothing to do with reclamation. Un appareil is a device or appliance, not apparel. Une laverie is a launderette, not a lavatory. Attendre is to wait for, not to attend, and demander is to ask, not to demand (which would be exiger). Régler une facture is to settle a bill, not to regulate anything; toucher son salaire is to receive it; un avoir is a credit note, not an asset here; un litige is a dispute, not necessarily litigation. On the credit side, French and English genuinely align on the whole Latinate layer of this unit — garantie, procédure, diagnostic, conformité, médiateur, inflation, remboursement — and on the impersonal on, which works like English "you / one / we": "quand on connaît ses droits, on ne se fait pas avoir". Exploit that shortcut; it is real.