French language Q&A Forum

Elle va acheter le poisson aujourd'hui du marché. Merci beaucoup.

This exercise doesn't work because the audio files are all out of sync. Instead of writing down what we have heard for each line, we are expected to guess what the next line will be !

Can you say "en levant [...] une des branches"? What's the difference between "lever" and "soulever"?

Also, just wondering why "avec l'aide de" isn't one of the accepted answers for the sentence "À l'aide de miettes de biscuit"?

In this listening practice, it is stated that the preferred response is 'je prends mon petit-déjeuner' - that is, with the hyphen. I left the hyphen out. Checking on the Academie Francaise site dictionary, it does not appear to recognise the hyphenated form as being accepted at all, and refers to déjeuner as either the first or midday meal, noting that in common use 'un petit déjeuner' is used for 'a breakfast'. It does note that déjeuner itself is also a verb intransitive form, but does not list petit-déjeuner (or the informal petit-déj) as accepted. The Academie is obviously prescriptive generally and French for France, but even for dictionairies with a more descriptive approach, such as Larousse, the hyphenated form is not listed as a 'noun', and only as being used as a V.I. (familier) at times (ie Je petit-déjeuner and translated as meaning «je prends (son) petit déjeuner». On the other hand, le Robert dico en ligne, does denote the hyphenated form as a noun. At the least, I think it is incorrect in the lesson to suggest the preferred form should be hyphenated, as at best it seems to me an argument can be made that either is acceptable (although not if the Academie remains the ultimate reference for material on this website). Worth a look?

When speaking can you say "un euro virgule cinquante centimes" or is it always "un euro et cinquante centimes"?

Perhaps the lesson on "Writing decimal numbers in French" could be updated to cover this topic as well.

What is the difference between: "nulle part" et "aucune part"?  In answered, "Je ne les trouve aucune part." as the translation for "I don't find them anywhere." I had written "nulle part", but then changed it to "aucune part" because I thought it was more accurate for "anywhere" (as opposed to "nowhere").