French language Q&A Forum

You gave the example "I'll have a coke" and marked this wrong when I wrote "Je prendrai ...".  I was puzzled and read the grammar lesson which explained about the 'futur proche' using "aller + verb".  I was aware of that construction although not aware that it had the technical name 'futur proche'.  However, all the examples given in English used "going to + verb" which seems correct to me.  On the contrary, "I will have" sounds to me like a simple future tense and should have been accepted.  I suggest your sentence should have read "I'm going to have", to make it clear to the student what construction you require. 

In a quiz: 

Q:  Qui est cet homme?

A:  C’est Marc Dupré.

Why C'est and not Il est?  

The first rule in the lesson for C’est is that you use it if it/he/she is followed by un/une/le/la or another article.  That is not the case here.

The second rule is to use C'est to express general, unspecific statements and opinions, referring to a thing generally, as in something unspecified is great or delicious, like "Science is fun!".  But here, the answer is identifying a specific person, Marc Dupré, not a general concept.  

Thanks.

I thought the verb "lancer" means to start/initiate, and "jeter" means to throw.

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.

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?

In the sentence "Nous faisons de progrès ensemble." Could one say "On fait de progrès ensemble"?