French language Q&A Forum

Do you recommend listening and repeating a listening exercises until I get it right, or just about right, or take one exercise and then move on to the next? Thanks!

The question was: 'How would you say "He appeared in front of me." ?' However, the answer list only allowed for one answer, such as 'il est apparu devant moi' and not the second answer, 'Il a apparu devant moi'. Perhaps a slight re-design of the question might help?

Why is it “des lasagnes’ and not “de lasagne”? Presumably I would only take one order of lasagne? 

Or is it that it could be either ( which of course if it could, if I am super hungry) and the more important thing is that I can hear the difference between “des” and “de”, since it is a listening exercise? 

Thanks.

I was surprised to see « de la confiture de framboises » indicated as incorrect (the final 's' getting the red strikethrough), not as an acceptable alternative. Only the singular « framboise » was indicated as correct, although the question was raised a year ago and it was noted that either is acceptable. 

The plural « framboises » is clearly not incorrect and should not be marked so. Otherwise, it looks like Bonne Maman et St Dalfour may need to change their labelling. 

https://www.bonne-maman.com/

http://boutique-stdalfour.fr/

"We might say Do you have any change?  but in French you cannot say Fais-tu avoir de la monnaie?" I understand this, but it is a non-sequitur where it currently sits, and seems a loose thread. It does not relate to the immediately forgoing discussion on use of n'est-ce pas, or any of the other ways of asking questions in this lesson. It is an inverted verb form sentence that would be better discussed in that lesson. It could do with clarification of the reason also - it reads more like a single exception  for 'la monnaie',  rather than that 'faire avoir' is not a compound verb expression used in French.

In all other lessons your examples are given in the order of conjugation, which I find enormously helpful.  In this one the order jumps all over the place.  It's a very minor issue, but could you re-arrange the sentences?  Thanks so much.

After all this time learning French l decide today to develop an English/French go-to chart for translation purposes. 

All of a sudden, the conditional tense sitting in the indicative mood in my little Bescherelle conjugaison book looks out of place. Why is it there, in a mood that expresses facts and certainties,  things that definitely happened?

 A little research in Bescherelle, on the web and here surface the fact that the Conditional in French is often classified as a mood unto itself (as in Lawless French) due to it's hypothetical expressions; and that more often, today, "pour des raisons de forme et de sens"(Bescherelle p.140), as a tense under the imperative. An example given for the latter  is that "aurait" , conditional present, equates the future present transposed into the past. So interesting! I had not seen this before. 

I wonder, what went into Lawless French's decision to classify the Conditional  as a mood apart instead of as under the Indicative mood? Either works , l am just curious.

Agreed.  Both choices are corrrect and depend on the context.  The same would apply when using ancienne.  One could say "mon ancienne voiture" or "ma voiture ancienne", depending on the circumstances.  Is it my old car or my prior car?  

You gave a “hint” that the person dressing up was Daniel, a man, so checked up in my trusty Oxford dictionary if there is a male / female spelling, and it has a ‘le zombi’ for a male zombie, and ‘le zombie’ for a female zombie. You’ve used ‘zombie’ so why bother with the hint ?

In the sentence : Tu parles à ta soeur. Tu lui parles. - why do we use ‘tu LUI parles’? Should not we agree the pronom with ‘la sœur ‘ (féminin) and say ‘ Tu elle parles’?