French language Q&A Forum

Bonjour / Bonsoir.

Ancien is one of those adjectives that changes meaning whether before or after the noun - former when before and ancient when after. However I came across the sentence in a French magazine - "l'un des plus anciens sites du pays", which obviously means one of the most ancient sites in the country. Presumably the inclusion of the 'plus' shifts the 'anciens' to in front of the noun and it retains its meaning of ancient. So "l'un des sites plus anciens du pays" would be wrong ?

I should have submitted this post in the general forum here:

https://progress.lawlessfrench.com/questions

So I deleted the post from here, and posted it in the other forum, using the same title.

Sorry.

"Depuis que Catherine a changé de carrière il y a quatre ans, plus personne ne la reconnaît."  I understand this to mean "Ever since Catherine changed her career four years ago, no one recognizes her anymore."  I would never have known where to put that "plus!"  I might have thought "personne ne la reconnait plus."  Would that have been wrong if I had been constructing the sentence instead of doing it as a dictation?

And a couple of little periods have been inserted in the vocabulary section at the beginning: eg. te.lle.  I like to look at this section as the whole piece is being read to me and I noticed these tiny typos.

I believe that “I arrived the day he left” refers to a non-specific timeframe and therefore should use the feminine form, but it was marked wrong on my test and the masculine “la jour” was said to be correct instead. Can someone explain to me why this would be the case, or if it’s an error?

It seemed to me that any time I was tested on "C'est" or "Il Est", I was simply guessing.

The closer a question matched one of the examples in the Lesson - the more likely I was to choose the correct answer. But if there was no exact match with an example in the lesson - I was stumped.

With respect, I found the following article somewhat easier to follow than the Lesson on this page:

https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/cest-vs-il-est/

That article uses the descriptor "determiner". IMO that descriptor seems to clarify everything for me.

There's a good article on determiners here:

https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/determiners/

So a determiner is just a posh name for a word that modifies a noun. It's similar to an adjective

The Lawless article is several times longer than the KwizIQ article. But if you ignore any material that is not mentioned in this current KwizIQ article, then the amount of instructional text will be about the same.

Here's how I read the Lawless article:

 (1) Read every word from the start until just before the red warning triangle.  .

 (2) You can ignore the material immediately after the red triangle. It's useful info, but it's not tested by KwizIQ.

 (3) Restart reading at "2. C’est and il est with inanimate nouns".

 (4) Ignore everything after the green scales icon. Again, it's useful info but - but not tested in KwizIQ.

Thanks

J’habite une maison or j’habite dans une maison. I see the first one written but say the second. Am I wrong? Is it possible to use both?