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Questions answered by our learning community with help from expert French teachers
14,985 questions • 32,498 answers • 1,021,981 learners
In the C1 writing challenge "A Ghost Story" the partial sentence "While I was pulling weeds" in the context "While I was pulling weeds ... I heard..." was translated "Tandis que j'arrachais les mauvaises herbes". "Alors que" was also suggested but my answer "Pendant que" was not. Why is that?
Larousse (https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/anglais-francais/while/624050) translates "while" as "pendant que" when it refers to a simultaneity of time (e.g. pendant que vous serez à Londres il faut visiter le British Museum), whereas "tandis que" and "alors que" it says are applicable to the case where "while" is used in the sense of "whereas" (e.g. elle est de gauche tandis qu'il est conservateur).
I understand that « faire le ménage » is an expression, but cannot see why « faire du ménage » would be grammatically incorrect. Only « faire le ménage » is accepted in the exercise. Both are noted in wordreference.
Isn't this the same as both « faire les courses » and « faire des courses » being acceptable, depending on context ?
In the sentence "Tu veux des épinards", Why is it "des épinards"? I understand that des is used to mean some when things are countable. But I don't understand why spinach is considered to be countable,
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