French language Q&A Forum

Why does “started to cry” use mettre? “ mis a pleurer. Can’t make sense of it

I know there are lots of exceptions in French! Is there one hiding behind the breaking of the symmetry of taking off two letters and adding one when forming participles (-er > -é, -ir > -i, but -dre > -du, rather than the simpler -re > -u) ?

The vocab list for Vive les legumes has pumpkin as une citrouille, yet it was marked incorrect with les potirons as the correct answer. Where did I go wrong? Thank you

in this example, two questions:

Ce sont les meilleures vacances qu'elle ait passées!

1. why "ce" instead of "ces", if vacances is plural?

2. why pasées instead of passée, if the noun is singular and avoir doesn't match in number?

Bonjour,  la cinquième phrase a le mot “départments”. Qu’est - ce que c’est, un départment? Pourriez - vous m’éxpliquez? Merci beaucoup.

The end of the passage states, "d'ici trois jours ouvrables" or "dans", but the English phrase to translate is "within" so should en not be used instead of dans? En being within and dans being similar to after ex number of days. 

Is there a mistake in the video at approximately the 1:08 mark? The example says:

Je mange une pomme and Tu *parle* à Marie. Shouldn't it be Tu *parles* à Marie?