French language Q&A Forum

I am curious about the construction of ...fait de lui...  Why not ...lui fait...?  It seems to me that 'him', in the English, is the indirect object of faire while Français is the direct object.  I used ...lui fait..., which was not one of the accepted translations.   Why?

Petite question. Je n’ai rien trouvé concernant un doute que j’ai où le sujet dont on parle s’agit de plusieurs noms et avec quel mot on doit faire l’accord.

Exemple:  La liste des mots que j’ai apprise.  

I wrote

tres bon instead of trop bon?

Whats exactly the difference. Someone told me trop is rather used for negative situations.

please clarify

Should “tes chaussettes de sport qui sentent mauvais” be “tes chaussettes de sport qui sentent mauvaises” so that “mauvaises” agrees with “chaussettes”?

I can’t figure out when to make cent plural when writing dates. I see it is plural in 1900 but not in most other dates. 

I'm sure the speaker says "charger" and not "changer" in this exercise. I understand that "charger" wouldn't make sense in the context but it is still off putting when doing the exercise and trying to faithfully write what is being said

One of the hardest ones yet! It showed me that I am clearly not ready for a French aerobics class yet, so at least there's that, haha! 

What are the positives and negatives of moving to the countryside in French

I am aware that this has been discussed before but it is clear to me that in certain cases “passer une année” can be used.

For example, on the web page https://acupoffrench.com/french-grammar/an-vs-annee-2/, which also explains when to use “an” or “année”, there is the following example with passer and année used to stress the duration:

“Elle a passé quatre années à chercher un travail.”

So I think it would not hurt to explicitly mention this possibility to use année instead of an to stress the duration. 

For the general case (not just related to passer), I think the rule from “Advanced French Grammar”/Monique L’Huillier section 5.2.1 an/année is clearer than the “time unit” vs “duration” distinction: “an usually follows cardinal numbers, whilst année follows ordinal numbers, or an indefinite or demonstrative adjective”.

This rule does not hold for jour/journée, soir/soirée and matin/matinée and these cases  are treated separately in the book.

This rule is then followed up in the book with “If the year is modified in any way, “année” should be used” with the following examples.

“J’ai vécu à Londres pendant cinq ans.”

”J’ai gardé un très bon souvenir de mes cinq années à Londres.”

Au cours des années, elle m'a transmis sa passion - why is passé composé used? She clearly says 'over the years' so a repeated action? surely the imparfait would be used here?