Word
J'ai vidé la poche parce que le billet avait glissé au fond.
Meaning
I emptied the pocket because the ticket had slipped to the bottom.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of J'ai vidé la poche parce que le billet avait glissé au fond.
je
I
avoir
to have
au
to the / at the (masculine singular)
le billet
the ticket
Questions & Answers about J'ai vidé la poche parce que le billet avait glissé au fond.
Why do we use the plus-que-parfait (avait glissé) here instead of the passé composé?
The plus-que-parfait shows that a past action happened before another past action. Here, the ticket slipping to the bottom happened first, which is why you later emptied the pocket (J'ai vidé, which is in the passé composé). It translates perfectly to the English "had slipped".
I thought verbs of motion used être in compound tenses. Why does avait glissé use avoir?
Why is it au fond rather than à le fond?
In French, you can never say à le. Whenever the preposition à meets the masculine definite article le, they must combine into the contraction au. The phrase au fond is the standard way to say "to the bottom" or "at the bottom".