French language Q&A Forum

I sometimes see references to "des" as being a plural partitive article.

This relates to uncountable/mass nouns.    So my query is:-

How is it possible to have a plural uncountable noun? 

and then to try to express "some" of this uncountable/mass noun?

I spent a while trying to understand this sentence, as there are several examples given later on with "que" or "qu’" at the beginning, eg qu’est-ce ?", "que veut-il ?"and indeed those starting "qu’est-ce que". I reckoned it only applies to your first group of sentences where intonation, rather than inversion is used to ask the question - is that right?

The above quote I think, should have AFTER replaced with BEFORE.

For future reference thoug... is this how I should ask if I  were in a deli for instance. Instead of saying "vous" I use "on" ..thus avoiding the   interpretation of "do YOU have" and correctly directing the question "do they (the cafe/deli) have?"... Seems a trivial point but I am  curious.

In the case of "She's not joking. She's saying it seriously.", what is "it"? Where is the idea that "it" is replacing? "She's saying she's not joking seriously"? Or is it "She's saying it's not a joke, seriously"?

I understand that I have to use "le" here as the lesson is about replacing an idea, but the idea seems so disconnected that I can't nail down what "le" represents, or why "en" would not be just as valid. 

Can I assume this can also be used for its literal translation? EX: "When are we going to all get together?" "I don't know. When we open the presents?"

Is this tense more commonly used in French than in English? I hardly ever speak like this in English and I find it to be a strange tense to learn since it doesn't seem likely that we learners will be reminiscing in French. That seems to be it's only use.

Hey! I answered a question (correctly) and in the results, they said I had unanswered it? What is going on with these tests? Hope you answer soon!

When translating the name Maryse Lépine I just assumed it was the same in french as in english but it is corrected to l'Épine. Is that right?

It may just be me but the lesson on Tout is a good example of what I find confusing about some (otherwise crisp and excellent) Kwiziq lessons: it’s not always clear what the green rule is referring to. Sometimes it comes before the examples, sometimes after (eg tout + adverb here). Sometimes it flips multiple times in the same lesson. It may be better to connect the red and green lines so they form a bracket around each formalism. I get that would require quit a lot of editing of existing lessons. Perhaps we could crowdsource that if you open the platform.