Question 1

Wait, doesn't "vit" mean "lives"? Why is it translated as "saw" here?

Accepted Answer

In everyday French, il vit means "he lives" (present tense of vivre). But in literature and formal storytelling, vit is also the passé simple (literary past tense) form of voir (to see), meaning "saw". You can tell them apart by context: an archaeologist "living" a parchment makes no sense!

Question 2

If this were spoken in everyday conversation, how would "saw" be translated?

Accepted Answer

In spoken French, you would use the passé composé. The sentence would be: L'archéologue a vu le parchemin antique dans le temple. The passé simple form vit is almost entirely reserved for written texts like novels, fairy tales, or historical accounts.

Question 3

Why use "antique" instead of "ancien" for "ancient"?

Accepted Answer

In French, ancien placed before a noun usually means "former" (like mon ancien patron for "my former boss"). To mean "ancient" or "very old" in a historical sense, we use antique, or we place ancien after the noun. Here, parchemin antique gives the specific feeling of a relic from antiquity.

Question 4

Is "archéologue" masculine or feminine, and how do you pronounce the "ch"?

Accepted Answer

It can be either depending on the person (using le or la). Also, the ch in words derived from Greek (like this one, or chorale) is pronounced like a hard English "k", not the soft "sh" sound you normally hear in French words like chat.

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