I wrote: La maison que nous avons loué
It was corrected to: La maison que nous avions loué
I was just wondering why it was corrected to avions. Is it a rule that I don't know of? Or has it just been read wrong by the person correcting?
2007-07-04 06:51:48 · 4 answers · asked by Jellybean 2 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
They've made your sentence into the pluperfect tense, changing the sense from: "The house which we rented" (perfect tense), to "the house which we HAD rented" (pluperfect).
To form the pluperfect tense you take the imperfect form of avoir or être and then the past participle. So it's just like the perfect tense, only the auxiliary verb is in the imperfect (the auxiliary being "avions" in "nous avions loué" and "étions" in "nous étions restés") in the pluperfect, as opposed to the present ("nous AVONS loué) in the perfect tense. :)
On a side note, "loué" should have an extra e because the past participle agrees with a preceding direct object (the house in this situation) when you use the perfect/plurperfect tense, thus making the sentence either: "La maison que nous avons louée" or "la maison que nous avions louée". Other than that the sentence is absolutely fine, bien fait!
2007-07-04 07:02:26 · answer #1 · answered by Susie 2 · 5⤊ 0⤋
The other answers are correct except for the description of the tenses. ...que nous avons louée is PERFECT tense - the house we have rented or the house we rented; ...que nous avions louée is PLUPERFECT tense - the house that we had rented.
2007-07-04 08:00:10 · answer #2 · answered by JJ 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
The first sentence is present tense : The house we have rented (and still own)
The second is past tense: The house we had rented (an no longer posess)
2007-07-04 07:15:47 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
They both can be correct, it just depends on when you are using the phrase. The first one means roughly "the house we rented" whereas the second one roughly means "the house we had rented".
2007-07-04 07:03:59 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋