I’ll send another message via the mairie website and follow up with a call if I can. Unfortunately it is nearly impossible for me to call in the mornings because of work and la Poste is not open in the afternoon (possibly the phone would be answered, not sure). The hour difference doesn’t help either.
1 Like
Mairie website sounds a good plan.
Damn, realised there’s another exception, when it’s a comparative. “Elle est plus jeune.”
3 Likes
Realised that but your basic premise was very helpful!
As with any language I reckon… there is the usual path, then the others which go the opposite way, for whatever reason.
Elle est plus jeune… I automatically don’t sound the “s” my cerveau seems to think it sounds rubbish if I do: plusje… 
(it’s a no brainer…) 
Quinquin is the nickname given to Octavian by the Feldmarschallin in the opera “Der Rosenkavalier”, but it takes place in Vienna in the eighteenth century, so it can’t have anything to do with it, can it?
Nein, überhaupt nicht, reiner Zufall 
lovely Strauss, my eldest daughter shares her name with another of his operas (again with a libretto by Hofmannsthal).
And don’t forget the elided “s/z” sound when followed by a vowel: “plus âgé, plus aguérri, plus obèse”, etc
1 Like
Elektra, Ariadne, die Ägyptische Helena, oder Arabella?
My wife is having difficulty differentiating between:
On peut, un peu
En été, ont été
Votre avis, votre vie
I’m trying to get used to using “on” instead of “nous” in colloquial French, and making the adjectives and participles agree. “On est invités”
Surely the words your wife is having difficulty with are used in a conversation???
It’s a bit like reading shorthand. Provided one has an idea of the subject, it all becomes clear (one hopes) 
On is the closest thing to neutral we have and is always grammatically masculine singular when it is as it were universal, otherwise it follows the number and gender of whatever it is replacing, does that help?
On peut, un peu
En été, ont été
She needs to practise listening to vowels, on un and en don’t sound at all the same to us, but I quite see they might if you aren’t French.
Right chaps, will this work as a letter of authority?
Je soussigné M Billy BUTCHER demeurant à 1 The Shambles, Sometown, Angleterre, ST1 1AA et propréteur de la maison située à 99 route du Paris, 99999 Bazon, France autorise Monsieur Jaques LeBoeuf ou Madame Alice LeBoeuf demeurant à 100 route du Paris, 99999 Bazon de récupérer en mon nom le colis Colissimo numéro 8Z1234567890.
Fait à le
Names and addresses changed to protect the guilty, obviously
Could use the La Poste model to add a few more flourishes….
1 Like
Ye gods that’s a faff, and doesn’t seem to say a whole lot more than mine, except that it’s a bit too open - I want to limit the authority to the one specific package.
Plus I’ve already forewarned the post office so I can’t imagine there will be a big problem as long as I have the French more or less correct.
The “Pour faire valoir ce que de droit” seems to be a standard bit of boiler-plate though - should that be included?
Propriétaire de la maison sise 99 route du XYZ
Sise comes from seoir and is used for where houses etc are situated. Seyant meaning something eg a garment suits someone, comes from the same verb.
1 Like
Thanks - I shouldn’t have got propriétaire wrong, but sise is a new one for the data bank.
1 Like
PS is située à actually wrong here or just less natural French?
Actually, that brings up a point - but I might start a new thread to make it.
Not wrong but it just isn’t the expression we use for legalish things.
1 Like
autoriser qqn à faire qq chose
être autorisé de faire qq chose
The difference lies in whether the subject is a personal pronoun or an impersonal pronoun.