French language Q&A Forum

The lesson re the above clearly states that “If it/ he/ she is followed by a determinant you will use c’est.” Why then, after taking Lucie’s temperature does the doctor say,  “ Elle est un peu élevée” and when taking her blood pressure, “Elle est un peu basse”? I can understand why he would say “Elle est élevée” or “Elle est basse” but surely the given answer contradicts the rule.

Hi, with regard to:

“when suddenly, an enormous sawshark swam above their heads!”

Half of the answers are of the type:

“quand soudain, un requin-scie énorme est passé au-dessus de leur tête !”

This set is in a format that I’ve encountered many times. 

The other half are of the type:

“lorsque soudain, un requin scie énorme leur est passé au-dessus de la tête !”

This set is outside of my grammatical experience. I’m okay with the “leur tête/la tête” difference, as I’ve learned that in French we don’t always use the possessive “leur”, and can use a definite article such as “la”, especially when the owner of the body part is obvious. But could you explain why in these “la tête” answers a “leur” has appeared in each case earlier in the sentence. Is this early “leur” necessary in order to change “leur tête” to “la tête”? How can we consider this early “leur” to connect to the later “tête” when it is separated from it so much?

Hi,

I think this lesson needs to be updated.

Because I learned in another lesson that: (Venir de/d'/du/des = To come/be from with countries/states/regions and continents (French Prepositions)):

De + feminine countries/states/regions

Du + masculine countries/states/regions

In this lesson, you only mention "de," which confuses me a lot at first to see all the examples are used with only "de". I had to cross-check between two lessons to see if I was understanding correctly.

If I'm wrong, please pardon me.

Have a nice day.

That example doesn't make sense to me, if they are referring to the duration of time they spent in Spain, then why use an instead of année ? Even without the need of emphasizing the amount of time they spent in Spain, wouldn't the usage of année be required anyways due to the rule stating that you should use it when considering the amount of time in it's duration ?

I’m confused by the instruction given for how to use this phrase.  Both present and imparfait are defined as “used to” in the examples.  what am I missing?  Of course for the very first question about this topic I bombed. And I don’t know why. Is there any additional instruction on this topic?

Why is it not "Non, ici rien n'est PAS cher"?  

I saw in a previous post that you refer us to Ne ... rien = Nothing (French Negations), but this says that you don't need "pas" in situations where you use a different word in place of "pas"...  so you could use "n'est rien" instead of "n'est pas".  But in the text above, "rien" is already in the sentence, so we shouldn't repeat it, right?  So, where is the "PAS"?  Or can any adjective simply replace the "pas"?

Please clarify... et merci beaucoup!

The last sentence "Je vois encore son sourire quand je l'avais surprise." I thought toujours would be better here as “encore” is more often used to describe something that's not going to last much longer, or something that's been repeated. “Toujours” expresses the fact that it's something frequent, or something very long (in this case, he will likely not forget her smile for a long time). 

Could you explain why we use encore here? 

une pomme à cuire = a cooking apple jumps out to me as an odd one out. You wash with a washing machine, iron with an iron and sew with a sewing machine but the apple is the one being cooked here. Is this a peculiarity of edible things or does the French just work differently to English?

Qu'est-ce-que cette citation veut dire ? 

"he must be worried sick at the idea that I'm worried/anxious about his silence" ?

Quoi ? S'il a mal, avec intoxication d'alimentation, cloué au lit, il a plus des problèmes que si elle est inquiété, non ?

Si ça n'est pas correct, je n'en aucune idée. 

what's the difference between "emménager" and "déménager"?