French language Q&A Forum

Hi, I just came across this on a test and I wrote that it could mean Jack descended on the giant (as opposed to the stairs ) and this was marked incorrect but in the explanation it states that they descended the stairs requires avoir as the auxillary verb so I cannot see why descending on the giant is any different? They both have a direct object.

I am a bit confused about this. Thanks

In all the above examples you use avoir + faire expres de, except on Elle fait exprès d'être en retard. 

Could you please explain why it isn't better to say "elle a fait expres d'......" 

Merci Aurelie. This was a really fun and uplifting song to listen to. Great listening practice. You are right - it is a bit fast, but I was able to follow along while reading the lyrics. Actually, the first two lines were the hardest to understand - I'm not even sure what it means in English to 'redden the tea in Amman's souks'!

Loved watching everyone draw their colorful images, too.

How come there's no "la" in front of Guadeloupe?

There's even a suggested lesson for this translation exercise that says that country names are preceded by the definite article? Using le, la, l', les with continents, countries & regions names (definite articles)%252Fsearch%253Fs%253Darticle%252Bcountry

I just opened a french novel and the first line is: "Il ne faut pas que l'on nous voie." I searched for negative statements like this on Lawless and found the example here: "Il ne faut pas que nous mangions avec les doigts." So I guess putting the 'ne . . . pas' round 'faut' is correct. It seems strange to me as an Anglophone. If I were making this up, I guess I would say: "Il faut que nous ne mangions pas avec les doigts." Is that incorrect? 

When do you use the definite article with countries and regions?There's a kwiziq lesson about this: Using le, la, l', les with continents, countries & regions names (definite articles)

But in the text, country and region names are never accompanied by the definite article. E.g., "Duché de Bretagne," "royaume de France," "couronne de France," etc. 

Also, I translated "beforehand" as "à l'avance" instead of "au préalable," which I thought were the same thing, but it wasn't one of the accepted answers.

A challenging topic I've been trying to learn about recently is finding gender neutral terms to use for non-binary people's jobs. For example, "Iel est bibliotechnician." In this case, using -an as an alternative to the masculine -en and feminine -enne.

I don't really have a question. I'm just expressing that this is a difficult aspect of this French topic!

Underground galleries is translated as galleries souterraines 

- a check of the french spelling shows only one 'l' in galerie.

In the final sentence why is dépeignait not given as an alternative verb. It seems more precise than représentait.