French language Q&A Forum

My best friend Pierre, who until last year shared a 2-bedroom apartment with me in Paris,

Mon meilleur ami Pierre, qui jusqu'à l'année dernièrer partageait un appartement de deux chambrtrois-pièces avec moi à Paris

Why can't I use l'annee derniere here?? the grammar doesn't explain! 

Thanks guys... can't do accents on this page

"Mais saviez vous que..."

I am a bit confused here.. why saviez and not savez? In English we often say "did you.." but that is a quirk and actually means "do you?" and it is heard as present tense. I see saviez as "did you use to know".. implying that you might have forgotten.. This is clearly an active question and I thought that French was more particular than that on its use of tenses.

Les grands maisons (my answer)

Kwiziq says it's Le grandes maisons however when you look at the examples they say grand is the plural form is grands. Why did they mark my answer as incorrect?

Are there any more examples you could give us? I used the direct object le with the apostrophe and it was marked wrong. How can we tell what word should be accented? Is ça always correct as opposed to le, la? In other words, are there certain times when the direct object must be before the verb or certain times when it has to be after the verb? Thank you.

What is the real difference between "de plus" and "en plus"?  In this writing exercise, the English word "plus" is translated as "en plus,"  "in addition" is translated as "de plus," and "besides" is also "de plus."

I have not seen this one addressed elsewhere, so I will post it and see if there is any advice. In all the exercises so far, "près de" is used. I am in Quebec and have been using "proche de", which seems to be commonly used.

So - the question: is there some subtle differences in the use of "près" or "proche" which I should learn?