French language Q&A Forum

Why are certain words (like five billion) written in plural while other words (like two thousand) are written in singular? 

turc --> turque  (pas le "c")

grec --> grecque (avec le "c")

pourquoi ??

Did a quiz, apparently answered wrong, and am now very confused.

The question: Elle ________ monté le poney de Jérémie et il a été très docile.

I went with "a monté". The quiz says the correct is "est monté".

Going by the Q&A, it seems like my answer was correct.  I am stumped in two ways. 

First, the Q&A says that avoir followed by the past participle is used for getting on a horse. This is a (pro)noun followed by a direct object. The lesson uses the example a "a monté mon cheval". I'm struggling to see why the verb auxiliary would switch based on who owns the horse. 
Second, assuming I have the first part wrong someone how and être is the correct auxiliary, should the correct answer not be "est montée"? The subject is feminine. 

I was not familiar with this expression. Vivement que .... 

Vivement que je puisse faire des voyages cette année, for example?

Merci! 

The use of 'many' is unidiomatic and characteristic of language lessons, rather than of spoken English. As this is a French lesson, not an English one, you may not regard this as critical. However, 'I have read many books' and 'He sent me many flowers' sound uncomfortably like translations from French or sentences spoken in fiction by a stereotypical francophone character. I would suggest that a native speaker would be more likely to say e.g. 'I have read a lot of books' or 'He sent me lots of flowers'. Yes, these are less direct translations of the French wording, but too much language tuition across all media has been and continues to be based on unidiomatic explanations and translations, not to mention the deployment of idiomatic expressions which no one has used for half a century.

The system says the above phrase translates to 'How did she get it wrong?' - but I couldn't work out where the 'it' is. I thought it might mean 'How did she go wrong?' then checked Google Translate, which confirmed my interpretation.

Could this please be checked? Thanks (loving the site by the way)

Pauline 

I thought that la peau would be an acceptable response rather than ma peau because it’s clear Marc is referring to his skin so there’s no need to use the personal pronoun?