French language Q&A Forum

I was taught (in both English-taught French classes and by French-speaking people) that the use of 'on' for 'we' was very colloquial and borderline bad grammar. I was baffled by the construction of the sentence using 'we' in English. I'm annoyed to be classified as 'lower intermediate' when I am considerably more advanced than that, even if I'm out of practice. I need to practice, but won't get much if I'm getting questions at this level and being challenged only by a confusing usage.

Will there ever be lessons about the seldom used tenses and what they are actually meant to do? Like the subjunctive imperfect, past anterior etc. I know that you don't use them in every day speech and rarely if ever in writing, but I'd like to see them in the future...maybe even in a new C2 section. 

Mon dictionnaire (un Robert) dit que l'adjectif "vidéo" est invariable, mais vous avez écrit "vidéos".  Je suis perplexe!

According to a lesson, "tous" should be placed between the auxiliary verb and the past participle  

This was a sentence in the lesson:  Ce soir-là, quelque chose d'extraordinaire se produisit.

Why is it not "quelque chose extraordinaire"?  Why is it "d'extraordinaire?" 

Thanks for the explanation!

Why is this sentence je ferai parvenir le dossier à Jean dès que possible put the prounoun lui before ferai?

But Tuesday devrais prêter attention when ce qu'il dit put the pronoun between devrais and prêter?

Thanks for helping

This is probably a very fine distinction. "I got on my horse", according to the lesson would be "J'ai monté mon cheval." So why is it incorrect to say, ''Lucas a monté la nouvelle armoire de sa sœur.'' - "Lucas got on his sister's new wardrobe"?"

In the test question with the magic beanstalks, the only accepted answer is Jack got off the magic bean stalk.

In three dictionaries that I have looked up (especially Le Robert & Collins), one of the meanings of decendre with etre is to 'climb down (a tree). Now the preposition 'from' is missing in those definitions but is that so significant a difference that the answer 'Jack climbed down the magic beanstalk" becomes incorrect.

"je trouve difficile de m'adapter" couldn't  " j'ai du mal à m'adapter" be used: 

Also "se confondre" used for "get oneself into a muddle".

I have come across uses of le conditionnel passé avec devoir where the meaning appears to lean more towards “would have” than “should have”.  Par exemple “les alertes auraient dû sauver des vies”, by the context of the article could have been interpreted as a praise of the alert system as opposed to criticising the fact that the alert system did not do its job. Alternatively, it could mean criticism of people for not taking notice of the alerts. So, does “ils auraient dû + infinitive” always mean “should have”, or is there some subtle shading of meaning?