French language Q&A Forum

If I ask a 'how come' question that refers to myself (and not to someone else), presumably the subjunctive does not apply? For example: -

"How come I'm not in the football team?" this presumably would not attract the subjunctive??

I only ask because other subjunctive lessons state:

 'When something happens so that / in order that someone else does something in French'

Can we ask "Tu as quel âge?" or "Vous avez quel âge?" ?

Should "Montre-moi les mains!" really be considered wrong? I understand you put that in this lesson as an example of reducing ambiguity, with "tes mains", but I definitely don't see it as something to be taken as a wrong answer in a quiz.

If I'm correct, we do the exact same thing in Spanish, and both "Muéstrame tus manos" y "Muéstrame las manos" would be correct. There is no ambiguity whatsoever (i.e. no sane person would wonder whose hands we're asking the person to show). Is it really really different in French?

I mean, it is one thing to try to get students to answer what you taught them, and a very different thing to reject right answers (especially when this very same lesson covers using definite articles for this). 

Since "que" is in front of "un", it means "I bought only one bike" (not two).  If I want to say "I bought only a bike." (meaning I bought a bike and nothing else), can you say "Je n'ai acheté un que vélo?

I also love inventing my own shish kebab skewers........

There is no option for 'also'  included in the french translations.

Salut ! C'est quoi la différence entre ces deux mots, "une liasse" et "un paquet" ? Is "une liasse" used for stacks of papers?

Q:''Tom et Paula se sont embrassés devant le miroir.'' can mean:

1.Tom and Paula kissed each other in front of the mirror.

2.Tom and Paula kissed themselves in front of the mirror.

The first correct answer is the normal one, which fits the French sentence. The second one is technically correct, but the only google results of this example that I've found were linguistic works discussing how weird it was. I've asked some English native speakers (who are also familiar with French at various levels), and it is really weird. As a C2 French speaker, I also find this weird, I have never encountered the second meaning. Should we really interpret that sentence also as "Tom was kissing his own hand in front of the mirror and Paula was kissing her own hand in front of the mirror"? In an exercise on the reciprocity expressed by the reflexive verbs?

Wasn't the original intention rather to put there both "Tom and Paula kissed each other in front of the mirror." and "Tom and Paula kissed in front of the mirror"? That would illustrate perfectly the issue at hand, that the reflexive pronoun is used in French and not in the English translation.

Are "l’autre soir" and "l’autre nuit" synonymous? Or different?

Hi, should hacher be spelt as hâcher? I did this exercise - https://progress.lawlessfrench.com/my-languages/french/tests/results/11294497/system - and got it wrong.