Subjunctive and tenses in other clauses

Question

I'm even more confused now. You say that you use the present subjunctive when the time frame of the 2 clauses are contemporaneous. It seems to me that in English the tenses are the same eg "I started" and "everybody warned" are both in the past tense. However, in the french translation it shows "commence" in present (subjunctive) and "tout le monde m'avait prévenu" in the pluperfect. Can you help please

Thanks

Accepted Answer

Hi Vikki,
The reason for the subjunctive in the first sentence -
Avant que je ne commence à apprendre le français 
is simply because of the use of 'avant que' 
Avant que + ne explétif + Le Subjonctif = Before I do
The subjunctive doesn't always correlate in English.
tout le monde m'avait prévenue = everyone had warned me 
Which is a pluperfect.
Hope this helps!

Answer

The two actions are: 1) The warning, 2) starting to learn French. Action 1 happened before action 2. The past subjunctive is used here to express that between 1) and 2) there is no temporal overlap.

Does that help?