French language Q&A Forum

1). You are all doing your homework (you, all of you, are doing your homeworks, not a single person doing other things) --> tous works on vous

2). You are doing all your homeworks (and not missing any homework from any subject) --> tous works on devoirs

This isn't covered in fully in the lessons, but I would like to know: how do we know when to use à + verb as opposed to de + verb? Some lessons cover de + verb, for example to say 'before running' I can say 'avant de courir'. But I'm not sure about the other case, à + verb. Any answers? I haven't had much luck searching the web for this, so any help would be much appreciated.

This is the one specific to this exercise:

"qui consiste à appliquer de la peinture sur de l'eau". Why not "qui consiste d'appliquer ...?"

Here are other cases I've found on this website:

nous avons commencé à le faire il y a quelques années

quand tu auras fini de ranger ta chambre, tu m'aideras à faire la vaisselle.

on est toujours pressé d'oublier les moments délicats

le temps que je finisse de manger, ... j'aurai fini de vérifier ... le temps que ça lui prend de se préparer

Why vos adorables créations and not vos créations adorables?

I've noticed sometimes long adjectives are placed before the noun. Is there a rule that covers this?

The instructions say: When referring to the street, road, avenue, or boulevard people live on (using habiter), you can either use dans la/le, simply la/le or nothing at all.

The three examples from the explanation page were J'habite la rue Pasteur; J'habite rue Pasteur;  J'habite dans la rue Pasteur , all following the instructions.  

However, in the quiz, Mon restaurant est en La Rue du Temple is given as a correct answer.  I did not choose this sentence as En was not mentioned in the instructions nor in the examples.  Is the difference between "habite" - living on the street vs. having a business on the street?  Thank you.  

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). 

Using the term non-verbal here is very confusing, as it seems like you are saying it should only be written and not spoken. Perhaps you could change it to read nominal sentences? A nominal sentence is one without an expressed verb. It would avoid the confusion.

your example above looks wrong... Martin n’est pas arrivé depuis longtemps should mean Martin hasn’t been here in a long time.  the past tense implies the action is completed. right???

Since the word "all" appears in English in the phrase "all three together", why can't a possible translation be "tous les trois ensemble"? I've commonly seen tous les deux used in French to mean both of them. 

Thanks!

-Brian

Why must I have a circumflex on the i for quoi?