French language Q&A Forum

Ils sont chez eux

The audio sounds strange

In the A1 writing challenge "Learning the guitar" the question

"because I find that it's a soothing instrument"

suggests the answer

"car je trouve cet instrument apaisant."

which I can see is very elegant but why is my answer incorrect:

"car je la trouve d'être un instrument apaisant"

I can find other examples on the web of similar usage such this:

"...que nous avons trouvé d'être un trait distinctif..."

While reviewing, I came across this question...  "How best to say 'He loved this book!'?"     Since the question was multiple choice, the answer that it expected was obvious.   But isn't l'imparfait better suited for this example than passé composé? When someone "loves a book", it is not a brief, one time thing. They don't love the book and then forget about it the second they put it down. It is more likely that he loved the book for years, until he died. Or if he is still living, he continues to love this book. It just seems to me that an emotion is a rather bad question choice for passé composé.

I'm trying to work out what to do when the two subjects are a person and something inanimate. Basically I want to say "I miss you and Paris" - and can only come up with "Toi et Paris me manquent" which doesn't seem right, or "Toi et Paris me manquez" -which definitely seems wrong! Maybe this is something you just can't say in French?

Isn't the rule that it's l' if it sounds like it starts with a vowel, not that it actually does?

For instance, «dans l'Hérault» is the correct form, but the rules in this lesson incorrectly state «dans le Hérault».

I recently read that someone (who is a native speaker and well-informed on grammar and usage) said that it is incorrect to say 'en arrivant à la maison' -- that is is 'en arrivant dans la maison'. While confirming that 'en arrivant au restaurant, ...au musée, ...au théâtre' etc. is correct, they claim that when saying 'arriving at home' the preposition 'dans' must be used. Can someone tell me if this is true, and if it is if it's just "because that's the way it is" or if there's some grammatical explanation? Thank you very much for your help!