French language Q&A Forum

Why is there no preposition "de" after the verb "descend" in the phrase: "Elle descend les escaliers" ?

He's going to call his parents.  ->  He's going to call them.

In these above examples, why are both the direct and indirect object pronouns placed in between the verbs instead of in front of both of them? 

Merci.

Why pendant and durant are used ? there are no clear begin and end in this sentence.

Re Daniel E’s post and responses below

I’m finding the use of the subjunctive past for future actions unexpectedly tricky, I think because the English "I need to leave by nine" or "they need us to arrive", already includes the idea of a completed future action (you can’t leave without having left or arrive without having arrived!)

Is the subjunctive present ever an option in this type of sentence or is the subjunctive past mandated?

How would you say Marc didn't watch it?  What is the order of the object pronouns in passé composé when the sentence is negative?

Biscuits is plural. Surely it should be:

I had eaten all the biscuits, and there were none left for the guests!

Thanks, Stephen

Why are we using  de in front of faisons  in the last sentence ? 

So the question was:

How would you say ''You haven't lived here long.'' ?

1. Tu n'as pas habité ici depuis longtemps.

2. Tu n'habites pas ici depuis longtemps.

3. Tu n'habitais pas ici depuis longtemps.

4. Tu ne vas pas habiter ici depuis longtemps.

So the instructions are that with negation depuis is in passe composé, so I picked the answer number 1,  but in results this was wrong as they wanted present - answer number 2. 

What gives?

Not sure if anyone is gonna read this, but for those that are from countries where a billion means a million million, french uses the word billion as well. 

This page confused me a bit since Spanish is my first language and in that language we generally use billion the same way as French, whereas the one thousand million meaning is mostly used in the English speaking world.