French language Q&A Forum

“au-dessus de l’assiette “. When I read this I picture the cutlery floating over the plate. “Dessus de l’assiette” I can imagine the cutlery sitting above the plate. Pouvez-vous m’expliquer pourquoi on utilise au-dessus vs dessus dans cette phrase. 

I wish someone rewrites this article clearly listing all verb forms of plaire as well as using direct object verb forms

How does the scoring system work? I got several sentences right without any corrections and scored 0 out of 70.

Another exercise with lots of corrections, I got 30. It doesn't make any sense. Or shouldn't we pay attention to the scores?

Could you please explain why we use "J'ai toujours voulu visiter Paris" - and for example "Hier je voulais visiter le musee"?

What is the grammatical explanation please for the two different tenses?

Merci ! :)

Question - He's having his make-up done.

(HINT: maquiller quelqu'un = to do someone's make-up)

Correct Answer - Il se fait maquiller

My Answer - Il s'est fait maquiller

Can someone explain this subtlety here?

I used j'aimerai and it was marked incorrect with j'adorai offered instead. I read the associated grammar lesson but I'm still not clear on why both are not acceptable?

Je me confuse sur cette exemple:  "il va manquer une chaise à ton oncle."   I get "there will be a chair missing" but how does "à ton oncle" (which I read as "to your uncle") compute as "your uncle will be missing a chair"?

In one of the examples 'this land' is referred to as 'cette contrée' rather than 'ce pays'

Le chevalier fut amené devant le roi de cette contrée par les gardes

Could you please explain this usage to me? Thank you

Hey, I was reading the following explanation of this topic, in the example at the end, should not be 

deux-cent-trente-cinq

instead of

deux-cents-trente-cinq?

French for "rifle" is "fusil", while "shotgun" is "fusil de chasse". This suggests the core French word "fusil" means something less specific than "rifle", which in English refers to the spiraled "rifling" along the inside of the barrel, which a shotgun lacks.

However, the Italian word "fusile" can mean either "rifle" or "shotgun", yet also spiral-shaped pasta, despite a shotgun lacking this.

Can anyone explain, s'il vous plait ?