French language Q&A Forum

Thanks for clarifying the use of de qui v. dont. Can I use de qui to refer back to an animal? For example: "Le chat de qui je parle est très mignon." Or is "qui" really just for people?

I've used the Kwiziq library search to try and find a lesson (or any information) on how to use "à partir de", but no luck. For example, can a translation of "from the 24th of July to the 5th of August" be "à partir du 24 juillet au 5 août" as well as "du 24 juillet au 5 août"? What's the rule for using  "à partir de"?

And why isn't the rule included in this lesson?

One of the questions asked to translate "Who are you watching like that?" into French.

The grammatically correct English question would be "Whom are you watching like that?"

Rien ici n’est cher. This lesson doesn’t say why we don’t add pas as in Rien ici n’est pas cher. Please explain why pas isn’t used. Thanks. 

Pouquoi "de" il essaie de parler français

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.

The following -ETER and -ELER verbs behave differently: they always and ONLY take the accent è on the first -e (-eter/-eler):

-ELER: agneler - celer - receler - ciseler - démanteler - écarteler - s'encasteler - geler (and derivatives: dégeler, congeler, surgeler) - marteler - modeler - peler

-ETER: acheter (and derivatives:racheter) - bégueter - corseter - crocheter - fileter - fureter - haleter

Regarding the question asked by Kyaw: perhaps the lesson "Nouns that are plural in English but singular in French, and vice versa" could have a few more examples added, including words such as 'vaisselle'. This is only a suggestion! 

I seems to me that in most circumstances "attendre que + subjunctive" means "to wait until" and "jusqu'à ce que" is unnecessary. I asked this a few days ago and stil have not had a reply, so I checked in both Grevisse & Wartburg/Zumthor. They agree with me and even say the simple "que" is better.