Here is another paragraph.....

[Pamela Kingfisher]

Maintenant, Julien comprend qu’il n’est pas seulement les Allemands qui sont mauvais. On realise que Julien sache le mal de Joseph, la lâcheté de la religieuse, et le sens de ne pas avoir capabilité à sauver son ami. Il se sent culpable pour l'arrestation de son ami. Mais Jean lui donne absolution. Les enfants sont plus sage, plus courageux, et plus juste qu’un grand nombre des adultes. L’innocence est perdu à jamais. Louis Malle emploie les personages divers pour monstre qu’ il n’etait pas seulement les Allemands que trahissaient les gens. On apprends il y avait les français, les françaises, les gens civil et les gens de l’Eglise Catholique qui succombaient à puissance des Nazis. Qui pourrait deviné qu’une religieuse puisse trahir son Père et surtout les enfants innocents? Malle a bien reconstuit le monde chaotique et du traître de cet époque.
I am grateful for any advice here, thank you. (Especially with pourrait deviné..."who would have guessed" is what I am trying to say.
Pamela

[Frank]

Maintenant, Julien comprend qu’il n’y a pas que les Allemands qui sont mauvais. On découvre que Julien ressent le côté mauvais de Joseph, la lâcheté de la religieuse, et le sentiment de ne pas être capable de sauver son ami. Il se sent coupable de l'arrestation de son ami. Mais Jean le pardonne.

Les enfants sont plus sages, plus courageux et plus justes qu’un grand nombre d’adultes. L’innocence est perdue à jamais.

Louis Malle emploie différents personnages monstrueux pour prouver qu’il n’y a pas que les Allemands qui trahissaient les gens. On apprend qu’il y avait les Français, les Françaises, les civils et les gens de l’Église catholique qui succombaient à puissance des nazis.

Qui pourrait deviner qu’une religieuse peut trahir son Père et surtout les enfants innocents ? Malle a bien reconstruit le monde chaotique et traitre de cette époque.

[Marc Vonhalmen]

...succombaient à la puissance des nazis.
....chaotique et traître de cette époque.
"Qui pourrait deviner qu’une religieuse puisse trahir son Père" is also correct. (peut or puisse)

[Pamela Kingfisher]

Thank you Marc!!
Pam

[Frank]

Hi Marc,

"Qui pourrait deviner qu’une religieuse puisse trahir son Père" is also correct.

The verb "deviner" is followed by the indicative, not by the subjunctive, see:
http://books.google.com/books?id=MZwe7UX3SlEC&pg=PT14&lpg=P...

....chaotique et traître de cette époque.

This is the old way of writing it. Rules concerning this accent have changed in 1990, and it's now superflous on "i" and "u" (but a few exceptions, not including "traitre").

You can read more about the recent amendments on Wikipedia: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapport_de_1990_sur_les_rectifications...

[Frank]

The first link isn't very extensive about this important rule (what tense to use after "que"/"qu'"), so here's a better one:

http://www.synapse-fr.com/manuels/QUE_INDSUB.htm

To put it in a nutshell:

- When what follows "que" is bound to happen, when you're convinced that it will happen (like "deviner"), and when it's already happening, "que" has to be followed by the indicative form,

- When what follows "que" expresses a doubt, a wish, an obligation or something that's just planned, the subjunctive has to follow the "que",

- When what follows "que" depends on a condition, the conditional tense is needed.

This is the kind of rule that makes the French grammar so scary :)

[Marc Vonhalmen]

Hi Frank,

I'm astonished about those 1990 rules :-O Never heard of them. Actually I'm was born in 1986 and I've always learned to write the "circonflexe" accent in the "old writing style", and that was after 1990. It's too bad to remove those accents. Most of them are there for an etymological reason. Those rules destroy the beauty of the French language :-)

About the "que + puisse or peut": I actually know those (scary) grammar rules too, but I tend to forget them :-D Nevertheless, using "peut" in this sentence really sounds weird to me (even if it's correct). Now if this site says "deviner + indicatif", I'll have to agree, but I still think it sounds weird ;-) But thanks for remembering me those rules, it's never too late.

[Frank]

Well, it took time for dictionaries and teachers to catch up. But the official reference is now the revisited spelling, and this is what kids are taught at school, and probably what Pam's teachers are expecting.

Does modernization destroy the beauty of a language? Well, your mileage may vary, but my take on this is that making a language easier to write can't hurt. The French language features tons of convoluted rules. Even we, native speakers, keep making a lot of mistakes because we barely remember these rules. Some rules just exist for etymological reasons. Not applying them doesn't bring any ambiguity. So why keep them?

Nowadays, a lot of teenagers are just unable to write anything that would look like correct French. They make no difference between writing and texting. Just this morning, I've read a resume. A quote was "ayant une orthographe irréprochable". Yet this very resume was full of huge grammar and spelling mistakes.

Why don't people pay attention to the French language rules any more? To start with, they want to write as quickly as possible, thanks to cell phones and chatrooms. But they also don't want to dwell on complex grammar and spelling rules, featuring exceptions and bloat for the sake of etymological reasons. I'm not advocating SMS-like writing for general use, because this is indeed butt-ugly, ambiguous and reading it is a PITA. But I'm all for having less rules, less exceptions, and for reducing the gap between written and spoken French. And of course, it'd be beneficial to people learning French as a second language. The main purpose of a language is to communicate. Make it more accessible and more people will be able to communicate. Ain't it great?

The 1990 rules was just a baby step, though.

[Frank]

A related thing is the decline of cursive writing. This recent article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090919/ap_on_re_us/us_cursive_angst and the related comments: http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/09/20/2351248/Cursive-Writing-Is-... are worth a read.

[Marc Vonhalmen]

I totally agree. Making languages easier to learn is a noble cause, but a language cannot be indefinitely made easier. Some languages are clearly easier to learn than others (for instance, English is much easier to learn than French, but French is much easier to learn than German, in my opinion). Nevertheless, if making languages easier by cancelling all writing-exceptions and weird rules can help people to communicate, then I think we should totally go for it :-)

[Pamela Kingfisher]

Wow! This is quite a discussion! Frank, I made at least 6 errors involving the use of que last time. Thank you for the explanation. But I made many word choice errors. So Neil is right, I need to consult my dictionary. At least I am finished with the rough draft and have today and tonight to try and catch them. I already know not use exclamation points!
Thank you Marc and Frank!!
Pam