French language Q&A Forum

In the explannation above, it says:

"To express lacking [something], you will use manquer de or d' + [thing].

You do not need to use the partitive articles (du, de l', de la, des) here, just as you wouldn't say I lack thesugar but simply I lack sugar:"

It's a bit confusing because then all the examples use "de". You really have to your know your grammatical terms! I wonder if it would be clearer to say:

"You do not need to use the definite articles (le, l', la, les) here".

Just a thought.

 Where do I use au, a la ,aux when going to a place.e.g je vais à l'hotel is  this correct .

In one quiz (Kwiz) I was asked to translate "five thirty AM" I wrote "cinq heures trente" assuming the 24 hour clock.  This was apparently wrong because apparently we were talking about a 12 hour clock.

In the very next quiz (Kwiz) I was asked to translate "ten minutes to seven AM" so I wrote "sept heures moins dix du matin" which was also wrong because we were now apparently talking about the 24 hour clock (not apparently for any other reason).

Would it be possible to tell us whether we were talking about 12 or 24 hours on the clock?

My natural presumption is for 24 unless otherwise specified.

the pronunciation tip at the end of this page says that -ais and -ai are pronounced the same. I found a comment by a duolingo mod linking to two pages that says otherwise:

http://bernardcousin.over-blog.com/pages/DE_LIMPORTANCE_DE_BIEN_PRONONCER-8743192.html

https://www.lalanguefrancaise.com/5-astuces-pour-ne-plus-confondre-le-conditionnel-et-le-futur

On forvo it does indeed sound like there is a subtle difference between aimerai and aimerais. é vs è. I hear the difference best when listening to other -ais words on forvo such as vais, sais, etc. It is subtle, but can someone else confirm that there is indeed an actual difference that contradicts the tip on this page?

I want to know all possible answers for that question

For I haven't stopped all day..., shouldn't one say, "Je n'ai pas m'arrêté une minute...  (i.e., i haven't stopped myself). Isn't arrêter alone mean arrêter + qqch ? Or in the case it is implying "Je n'ai pas m'arrête (+faire qqch) so the reflexive is not used. 

Also in French is there a way to distinguish: 1) We are all keeping our fingers crossed, and 2) We are keeping all our fingers crossed? (or in general: We are all selling our qqch vs. We are selling all of our qqch where qqch is a masculine noun? ). 

In the video:" Les fleurs, c'est beau." C'est  is singular, beau singular, fleurs plural. Why    c'est   and not   Ce sont?

Merci

is there a trick to find the gender of nouns without knowing it beforehand ?