French language Q&A Forum

Why was qu’un demi du sac de riz wrong? It should have been une moitié and I can’t see why. What makes du sac de riz feminine?

And how do I know when this question has been answered. I get no email notifications of new answers. Thanks. 

I wrote 'les chauves-souris' . Your text was 'les chauve-souris'. After completion of the dictee, I checked dictionaries which add s to chauve in the plural form. ??

Hi,

In a context outside these lessons, I was asked to put the following sentence in la voix passive:

"Le conducteur n'a pas pu arrêter le train à temps."

I thought it would be straightforward and answered as follows:

"Le train n'a pas été pu arrêter à temps par le conducteur."

But this was marked as false, with the correct answer being:

"Le train n'a pas pu être arrêter à temps par le conducteur."

I don't believe the use of la voix passive with modal verbs (pouvoir, devoir, vouloir) was covered explicitly in this lesson, so I wanted to ask if you could please explain these rules, since it seems they might differ from the rules presented here.

thanks, Scott

This subject prompted a memory game taught to me at school regarding the “pronoun” order before the verb : me , te, se, nous, vous / le, la, les / lui, leur / y, en   -   before verb

We learned it like parrots and it has been useful.

In the phrase "Elle attire ainsi une société aisée qui construit….." why are attirer and construire conjugated in the present? (The translation confirms that they are, as we would expect, in the past.)

It is not helpful to say Well Done when it is not. Some constructive advice would be better.

I have it in my notes that “après que” uses the indicative tense, so is there a reason why the subjunctive is used in this occasion ?