French language Q&A Forum

When should you use offrir instead of donner to say give?

What are the conjugations of other irregular ER verbs?

Many thanks for your explanation Maarten. Very useful

A general question rather than a specific one, though this is an example.  The lessons, as I understand them, teach that short, and some common adjectives go before the nouns, but otherwise (unless for particular stress) most adjectives go after the noun.

However, I have noticed that often these rules don't seem to apply. Puissant is neither short (in my mind one syllable), or common. However the text above places it before, but after is acceptable as well when the exercise is marked.

I have noticed this many times in doing the exercises.  As a consequence, I am confused. 

If the simple answer is that "short" means 2 syllables, I will be content.

This is doing my head in... My grammar exercise book has:

1. Nous devons fermer tous les volets. -> Nous devons tous les fermer.

2. Elle va faire toutes ses courses au supermarché. -> Elle va toutes les faire.

BUT

3. Nous souhaitons recevoir tous nos amis pour notre anniversaire de mariage. -> Nous souhaitons les recevoir tous.

My textbook gives no explanation as to why tous/toutes comes before the object pronoun in 1,2 but after the infinitive in 3.

I understand that you are trying to be politically correct by using "they/their" when speaking of Ankou in your English translation even though it's a singular noun.  If this were a non-binary French person, I could understand your effort.  But in English we would say "it" for this strange, unknown figure.  Why not use that?  It gets very confusing.

Hello, i am struggling to understand this construction: ces drôles de choses; ces drôles d'objets. Can anyone help with the grammar reasoning behind it or the link to a lesson on this?

Merci.

Seems like we're putting the verb before the subject.  Why not "les panneaux produiraient"?

I’ve just dropped a point for omitting the -là in the general statement "La vie était plus dur à cette époque-là".  Could someone clarify the distinction between à cette époque and à cette époque-là, as both seem to be found online, as well as in Céline’s answer two posts down. Thanks!