French language Q&A Forum

Why is it not "je ne changerais *pas* ma vie pour rien au monde"? Is "pour rien" a varient of the "ne... rien" negation?

Why is it that the ending /s/ in "boutiques", in this sentence "mais toutes les BOUTIQUES EN ligne sont en rupture de stock", is not pronounced before the next vowel /e/ in "en"? 

So it was pronounced like /boutiQUE-en/, rather than /boutiqueS-en/ which is what I expected.

Is it just a style? I find it hard to know when I'm supposed to pronounce the /s/, or /x/ at the end of a word if it comes before a vowel, and when I don't.

We have “Non, désolée, je ne peux pas…”. 

Do we get the female version because the speaker is female and it’s really an abbr. of “Je suis désolée”? If the speaker was a man would we get “Non, désolé, je ne peux pas…”?

Very 'tricky/unnatural' syntax for this 'idiom' 

le gâteau était en forme de fusée ! so forme and fusée are two nouns with noun 2 acting  as adjective (like 'la salle de classe). No article before first noun because of preposition 'en' which  kinda  fools us(well me) a bit. I tried "they made rocket shaped  cakes" and got "ils ont fait des gâteaux en forme de fusée". Rockets have ONE SHAPE and thus all the cakes had that ONE shape.

I tried "they made cards in the shapes of flowers" and got "ils ont fait des cartes en forme de fleurs". Not 'formes'! Usually even behind idioms are solid grammatical truths.. I suspect this is a dumb question but does  the use of 'en' in this context require a singular noun. Examples of 'not' dont come to mind... unless with a noun like 'larmes' which is really be default plural.