French language Q&A Forum

I assume it is a simple answer but am confused as to  when I must use infinitive vs past participle…with past conditional

Tu aurais fait un bon professeur  You would have made a good teacher

MAIS

J'aurais pu être un grand artiste.

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

Sa femme peut-être avait toujours voulu visiter la côte ouest ? Mais les mariages sont souvent mystérieux 😆

The question doesn't specify whether the pain is physical or emotional, don't understand why answer is incorrect.

Porquoi pas iconique mais emblematique?

What does this mean, kindly illustrate it with an example.

When the subject of your interrogative sentence is a noun, this one comes first and it's then repeated by the matching pronoun

"qu'on pouvait passer ses vacances ainsi"   Why l'imparfait and not le conditionnel?

Hi,

I had written, "...  nous étions partis" in lieu of the recommended, "... nous étions parties". I don't understand the recommendation:

So "étions" as auxiliary "être" in imperfect (indicative) tense, 1st person plural, added to the past participle "parti" so as to construct the compound past perfect tense. 

I constructed the past particle as male gender plural so, "partis". This as we have two assumed female genders (Joséphine and the writer Amélie) as well as at least one other, gender unknown, as expressed through the larger sentence, "... et avec laquelle nous étions parties". 

I thought the rule for French grammar was, choose the male gender when the gender is unknown...l don't want to support patriarchy. I do want to get my grammar straight. Thanks!