French language Q&A Forum

Can you say "ça est une idée brillant?

Thsee are what I think are correct:

Je veux le café = I want the coffee

Je veux le café = I want coffee

Je veux du café = I want some coffee

Ils veulent des cafés = They want coffees

Ils veulent du café = They want some coffee

ILS veulent le café = They want coffee

Ils veulent de café = They want a coffee.

I think these are all correct grammar, depending on the situation.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

How is «I eat neither apples nor pears»  in the test I just did, significantly different to  «I like neither cheese nor milk»? There is nothing at all that I can see in the construction of these sentences that gives a clue that the first is «Je ne mange ni pommes ni poires» while the second is «Je n'aime ni le fromage ni le lait» ie one uses definite article and one doesn't. If there is something special about the verb «aimer» or «manger» this needs to be detailed - but it is not. Perhaps one of the translations is 'wrong', noting that the French could be «I eat/I like» or «I am eating/I am liking». Nothing in this lesson clarifies this either, despite multiple comments and complaints that it is poorly discussed, and the examples are unsatisfactory. 

At least in American English, we'd say "Pope Benedict the sixteenth resigned" or "The pope resigned" but never "The pope Benedict the sixteenth resigned."

Elle est à New York 

She is in New York

Why can we not say

Elle est dans New York

She is in New York

Q:''Tom et Paula se sont embrassés devant le miroir.'' can mean:

1.Tom and Paula kissed each other in front of the mirror.

2.Tom and Paula kissed themselves in front of the mirror.

The first correct answer is the normal one, which fits the French sentence. The second one is technically correct, but the only google results of this example that I've found were linguistic works discussing how weird it was. I've asked some English native speakers (who are also familiar with French at various levels), and it is really weird. As a C2 French speaker, I also find this weird, I have never encountered the second meaning. Should we really interpret that sentence also as "Tom was kissing his own hand in front of the mirror and Paula was kissing her own hand in front of the mirror"? In an exercise on the reciprocity expressed by the reflexive verbs?

Wasn't the original intention rather to put there both "Tom and Paula kissed each other in front of the mirror." and "Tom and Paula kissed in front of the mirror"? That would illustrate perfectly the issue at hand, that the reflexive pronoun is used in French and not in the English translation.

My verb conjugation site shows this as répartez. I’d put répartissez and then changed it. Are there two possible translations or is this site wrong? I checked and it definitely said to divide. Thanks!

'que les gens me donnent' - was the answer for 'have been giving me'.   I thought that the French here meant (in your answer) -  'that the people 'are' giving me'.