French language Q&A Forum

Is there a way to add accents on the letters? I don't have them on my keyboard...I still enjoyed this practice though!

I was doing the exercise (https://kwiziq.learnfrenchwithalexa.com/my-languages/french/exercises/judge/1833/14548249?response=4150265&page=7) to answer a question and now have one of my own:

There's the phrase: visiter les ruines du vieux château.

How come the rule that the definite article is omitted if there's an adjective intervening between de and the noun is not applicable here? I would have thought this should be ...de vieux château.

Couple of queries:-

In the sentence ' As I grew up, it was her melancholy ...' the advice is to use c'est. Why not c'était?

and,

In the sentence 'Barbara, as you used to sing (it) so perfectly, our most beautiful love story will always be you., the 'it' refers to the 'love story' which is feminine so 'comme tu le chantais' should be 'la'?

Thanks

Is there topic on negative with "Il ya a" Can't seem to find it.

'Mon frère qui habite en France.' I would assume it's wrong to use 'à qui' or 'auquel' in this context, but I don't know why? When is it most suitable to use 'qui'?

Si seulement c'était si facile de rendormir les enfants :-)

'qu'il m'a donnée pour mon treizième anniversaire.' - the link you provide with this question, 'special cases of past participle agreement with avoir' describes that, in passé composé with avoir, the past participle must agree with the object when the verb is preceded by a direct object, but also explicitly states that the rule does not apply to indirect objects. Is not 'me' in this case an indirect object (he gave it to me)?

In the phrase, "où ils lui ont confisqué son portable",  Why is "lui" there?  If it's a pronoun for "him" why does it need to be there?  (The subject is "they", the verb is "confiscated" and the object is "his mobile phone".)  What grammer rule requires "him" to be part of this sentence?  Is there a lesson that explains the answer (I feel like I've missed something).

Kevin