French language Q&A Forum

This exercise used the imperfect tense of pouvoir to translate the English word, could.  The French also use the conditional tense to translate could.  I am sometimes confused as to the correct choice when trying to translate could.  I searched the library for pouvoir and found lots of lessons regarding various tenses for pouvoir; however, I found none for the imperfect.  I am surmising that the use of the imperfect for pouvoir is appropriate in what I call "if I could-then I would" constructions. The if part would take the imperfect of pouvoir.  This is distinctive from a simple condition as in "Could you pass me the salt?", which I believe would use the conditional form of pouvoir.  I hope you understand my question.  I am simply trying to figure out when to use the imperfect form for pouvoir when trying to translate could.  Thanks in advance.

Can you give me some guidance on when to use mal as an adjective.  I wrote "le reste du casting n'avait pas l'air mauvais". 

I believe it is similar to bon v. bien as an adjective.  I read somewhere that bon is used to describe taste, smell, physical sensation or a person's level or quality  Otherwise, use bien as the adjective.  Is this correct and does it apply to mauvais v. mal?  Thanks.

I asked about this previously & the answer that was given was that both spellings were acceptable with the hyphenated spelling more widely used. But in the text of this lesson the first sentence uses "week-end" & the last sentence uses "weekend". At the very least wouldn't the convention be to use the same spelling throughout a composition unless directly quoting another written piece?