French language Q&A Forum

Can you please explain when 'de' is used before a number in French? 

- La population a augmenté l'année dernière de 3,46,000 personnes. (Does it mean 'increased to' or 'increased by' here?)

- Le prix est de 500 dollars.

And, is there a general rule about using "de" before numbers? Please explain? 

Why not "de petits morceaux," as there's nothing to designate a specific tomato? 

And why not "la carapace" as we're talking about the same animal subject?

"La tradition veut que..." and "Puis la coutume veut que..." does the use of avoir vs être hold a special/unique translation? Or is it simply "is"?

 The answer was” lui est reparti”. I wrote “il est reparti” after lui, thinking lui was only there for emphasis.

I’ve never seen lui used as the subject pronoun. Am I missing something?

can I say j'ai mieux couru que toi? doest it work 

Two things: I looked up the suggested words and phrases on Google Translate, and a bunch of them ended up being marked wrong. Why not just give us a vocab list at the start?

Also, the phrase "He is very good" is followed by the hint ("good at basketball "). I'm not sure why a hint was given, since the answer was "Il est très bon". Because of the hint I thought the answer must need something more, when it didn't. Maybe eliminate that hint from the exercise? It doesn't serve a purpose.

I believe "recommendations" should be "recommandations", can someone please confirm that ? Thanks Paul.