French language Q&A Forum

if ‘avoir envie de’ can be used as an alternative to ‘avoir besoin de’ for saying ‘needs to go to the bathroom’, why can’t it also be used for ‘needs to take a day off’? Isn’t it all down to context in both cases?

The English text says "I crossed the Garonne river...", but the French text uses "nous" throughout. Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/VIvVD4V

The excercise translation was poires rose, while the complete tesxt at the end was pois roses. This sort of thing and punctuation at the end of phrases indicated as errors makes me doubt the utility of these exercises.

"Il avait même fallu que les autorités démentissent le canular". According to a conjugation guide I use, this sentence appears to use "démentir" in the subjunctif imparfait, which I think is rarely used today in French. Would it be better as "que les autorités démentent" (present subjunctive)? Or maybe "aient démenti" if a subjunctive in the past tense is needed here? 

Does a mother give baisers or bisous to her children? When is each of those words used. 

After trying this exercise several times in the past few weeks, I'm still trying to figure out 

1) why "They stayed there to watch..."  is "Elles sont restées..." instead of "Elles y sont restées.."  Is "there" implied and therefore the "y" is unnecessary?

2) why s'approcher is used in the instance of the people approaching the fence while approcher is used in the horses timid approach. Both connote gradually moving closer, don't they?

I was intrigued by "dans ces moments-là" which is dropped into the examples without explanation of the choice of preposition. Maybe because it’s a generalisation, which doesn’t reference a particular time? I can’t see that it’s down to the choice of "moment" because you can say "en ce moment".

This lesson needs some real sentences to demonstrate how to use the expressions.

Example "Add a liter and a half of water" = Ajouter un LITRE et demi d’eau" but "Add a liter and a third  of water" == "Ajouter un litre et UN tiers d'eau".  Sentences along these lines. I apologize if there is another lesson showing this. If there is it should be linked.  Note also I am confused by the inconsistency of online translators with the above examples..

Additional difficult sentences " One third of  students had a passing grade" == "Un tiers des étudiants ont obtenu une note de passage" OR " Un tiers des étudiants A obtenu une note de passage"??? I have seen both.