French language Q&A Forum

How can you distinguish "le costume" form "les costumes" while listening. It sounds the same for me.

When this command is negated, it becomes "Ne vous dépêchez pas ! (or ne te dépêche pas). I could not understand the rationale for this structure by reading the current lesson.  I am guessing the reason may be because, nous, vous,  and te are pronouns and so surrounded together with the verb by ne and negative word. Clarification would be greatly appreciated.

I have trouble understanding when to use les and when to use des when you don't use an article in English.  For example, it is j'ai les yeux bleus but je porte des lunettes.  I have found the same problem in other exercises.  For example, j'aime les salades but je mange des salades avec des framboises.  Is there a simple rule to tell when I should use les and when I should use des when I wouldn't use anything in English.  Thanks so much.

I find this expression interesing: "comme le veut la tradition". Is there a specific lesson for that?

Would it work also in these examples? E.g. "The cake was made of chocolate, like how he wanted it." "The red coat is more beautiful, as she says."

Thank you

I am a bit confused with the following sentence. The correct thing is to put ce que but instead, in the lesson, we know that ce qui should be used when the next word is a verb or an object or a reflexive pronoun?? Is it because, the "tu" is in front of the m' that doesn't count? Because I assumed that since there is a reflexive verb I should put ce qui. 

Thanks, 

Anna

Why does the young woman have a lilt on words at the end of her phrases? Is that a cultural thing? It reminds me of a California "valley girl" accent...

I thought "par hasard" meant "by chance" and "au hasard" meant "randomly".  To me, this is similar to the difficulty in distinguishing au moins/du moins and enfin/finalement. 

Bonjour à tous,

I am not clear on when one uses payer vs payer pour and I haven't been able to find a good explanation anywhere. Hope you can help.

My question is similar to Liz.  While I resolved the test question "Ce matin, ________ monté au grenier pour ranger un peu." by acknowledging that you dont 'climb the attic' but rather 'climb??  into the attic' and therefore needs 'ETRE', I cannot convince myself re  the sentence "I  got up on my horse".

If you translated as he 'I mounted my horse" then J'ai monté mon cheval.

But visually and maybe literally "i got up on my horse"  is the difference between the dashing hero Lone Ranger style who really mounts and and the bad-guy Jack Palance who slowly 'gets up on his horse' and therefore needs time to "il est monté".

Ok I am being silly. But would you translate the english sentence "i got up on my horse " exactly as you would "I mounted my horse" ?  Sad if true because then in french you would lose something in the transaltion.

Tôt is wrong to say you are early today? Why?