French language Q&A Forum

This explanation doesn't explain why sometimes one says 'L'hiver' and at other times, 'En hiver', and similar for other seasons.  The examples given do not enlighten me much.  I have always had trouble with this.  At first I thought, oh, you use 'l'hiver' when you are going to say something describing a feature of 'hiver', and 'En hiver' when you want to say something happened during 'hiver', but then the other examples given in context of other seasons etc mostly described activities occurring during the season regardless of the 'en' or 'l'' beginning.

I need it stated explicitly what the rule is, there doesn't appear to be one.

1) Surely glacier should be an acceptable translation for ice cream parlour?

2) I'm struggling with the use of à rather than de for the ice cream scoops.  A scoop of vanilla ice cream would be une boule de glace à la vanille, but in removing the word glace, I'd think you'd be left with une boule de vanille.  

Merci. 

Hi. I understand that one could say "Je donne les requins à Anne" (i.e. "I am giving the sharks to Anne...imagine that Anne is a marine biologist) or "Je les donne à Anne" (i.e. I am giving them to Anne) or Je les lui donne" (i.e. I am giving them to her). However, how would one say "I am giving Anne to the sharks" (imagine that Anne has upset the local mafia) using a double pronoun (i.e. "I am giving her to them"? Presumably, one cannot say "Je lui les donne" (because it would violate the rules on the order of pronouns)? What about "Je y lui donne"? Any help gratefully received.

The preposition malgré is closer to despite, whereas the expression en dépit de is closer to in spite of.

I found this sentence a bit confusing as the pairs of words are described as interchangeable (and certainly are in English, apart from despite being a bit more formal) - does that "closer to" just mean that one of the pair is a single word and the other a prepositional phrase?

Why is it 'le jeudi' not just 'jeud'i?

We are talking about a particular Thursday here...

Dans la phrase "Mais s'il vient du Québec, d'Alberta ou de Manitoba par exemple...", on utilise du Québec mais d’Alberta, au lieu de de l’Alberta et aussi de Manitoba au lieu de de la Maintoba.   Ça semble un peu contradictoire.   Pouvez-vous me l’expliquer ?   Merci, en avance. 

For the question ""Je suis très vieux." The speaker is:" I have answered this as "male" but the bot is grading my answer as BOTH incorrect and unanswered.  Could you advise which it is?

I notice nearly all the subjects in these examples are proper nouns (with one qui?). When using a subject pronoun instead, would it become ce /c’ to avoid the il/elle + determiner construction ?

For example:  

 Elle est intelligente —> c’est la fille la plus intelligente de la classe 

In this text, I'm not convinced une restoration is a real French word. Is this a typo ? It's not in 3 dictionaries I've checked. 

Shouldn't it be restauration ? If I am correct, please can it be corrected ?

thanks

Paul.