French language Q&A Forum

Just when I think I might have that French partitive sorted out, I fear not!  

" un petit pot adorable de la confiture à la framboise."  My thinking was that the container was named, "un petit pot" so why not "de confiture..." ?!

What is the negative of this sentence

Elle a cinq crayons 

The fill in the blanks exercise was about people arriving in a new town, to find the streets empty of people. "Tous les magasins de la ville étaient fermés." This was followed by a sentence in the past tense (walking on empty streets from 3pm till 5pm) Then came the sentence being queried (post below).   Thanks so very much to all who responded earlier.

Hi, in the alternate possibility that is given, “lorsque l'on termine une tour.” is the “ l’ ” there purely for pronunciation reasons? And could we use “lorsqu’on”? I remember something about it being desirable to avoid the sound of the French word “con”. Do friends in casual conversation care about that, or it just something to bear in mind in polite company?

Why is it the Canal du Midi and not the Canal de Midi, given that Midi describes the Canal and not the Midi is possessive of the Canal.   

Asked to translate, “ In the evening before a test “, I wrote, “La veille d’une épreuve” which was considered incorrect. The answer given was, “Le soir avant un exam”. Why was my answer wrong especially as “exam” does not feature in Harrap’s Shorter French And English Dictionary or Le Robert de poche. Test is translated as épreuve and examination is translated as examen. In a school context tests and examinations are different the former being of less importance.

So, formally, il faut ranger ta chambre can also be written as il te faut ranger la/ta chambre, right?

Le soir, la ville se réveillée.

Le soir, la ville se réveillait.

This is in the context of a visit to this city, which came alive in the evening. Until then the shops were closed and the streets empty. The text book answer was NOT in the imparfait. What is the rationale applied here?