French language Q&A Forum

WhyWhy "le premier jour de 'Hanoucca" and not "le premier jour d'Hanoucca"

Please explain why partir is used instead of aller for "Where are you going this year"?

Thank you

This line was in a song "la liste" by Rose.  Does this sentence mean to sit for the permit test, or to pass it?

One of my biggest struggles has always been to understand the logic behind the changes in spelling and accents for certain verbs in the present indicative - doubling consonants or changing the accent on the letter “e”. It is not easy to find a comprehensive explanation about these changes. Instead we are just told to “memorize” the conjugations, which is frustrating.

I have searched many, many sites and textbooks, and knew that there was a reason related to pronunciation and syllable stress. I finally found a site that explains this pretty well. Perhaps this is self-evident to others, but it was not to me, and i thought it might help those like me! I hope you can access this link if you are interested!

https://languagecenter.cla.umn.edu/lc/FrenchSite1022/VERBCONer.html

Hi,

“les descendants” is a noun, so should the translation be more along the lines of “the French-Canadian descendants of those original colonists”?

I quote:  "Note that quite a few verbs, such as regarder and attendre, are used without prepositions in French, i.e., regarder [x] [quelqu'un]; attendre [x] [quelqu'un], whereas they have one in English (i.e., to look at [someone], to wait for [someone]."  (For English speakers, an easy way to remember that we don't put an "a" after regarder and attendre is to consider these words translatable as "watch" and "await" which similarly, in English, do not require a preposition.)

saying "literally - and we completely remade my wardrobe" isn't quite right when you've missed out "together"? I feel like these hints aren't helpful and in fact hinder my progress in the text as they aren't "literal" at all. Plus in that sentence, to say "we bought me a new wardrobe" isn't quite what a native English person would say, they'd simply say "and we bought a new wardrobe (for me). 

Hope this can be of use and makes sense from my point of view. 

If

Ne le lui donne pas is don't give it to her, 

what is don't give it to him?

Why do we say "le prochain étape" and not "l'étape prochain"?

In the phrase "...parce que je savais que nous nous en souviendrions pour le reste de notre vie," why is se souvenir conjugated in the Conditional? I thought a verb following "savoir que" had to take the subjunctive, especially since it is not a known fact.

https://www.lawlessfrench.com/subjunctivisor/savoir/