French language Q&A Forum

If you can say it is seven o'clock at night, sept heures du soir, why can't you say seven o'clock in the morning, sept heures du matin?.......Thirza

Rule: words ending in -é are usually masculine (no exceptions mentioned)

Answer: FEMININE!

Given that it is obviously an exception,  why ask it like this? Just discourages students who've gone to the effort of remembering the "rules".

Sometimes the English translation is not even close to what the French should be. Could you possibly give us the basic expression and then we can make the necessary changes? It is very frustrating and disheartening to spend so much time looking up vocabulary and invariably choosing the wrong word/expression. For example in this exercise," Do you ever hear  from Tatiana?" Looks pretty easy! If you could give the basic "ça + pronoun+arrive de+ infinitive", we might have a much better chance of getting it right and actually using it again. I have a pretty good understanding of French grammar but I am having a hard time with these writing exercises because I don't know the idiom or the expression. It would be more useful if you could list the most important vocab in French in the writing exercise ! Many times the explanations that accompany the exercise don't apply because the problem was not the grammar but the idiom or the expression used. Just a suggestion! I have really improved so much using this site. I do appreciate all your hard work. It is the best site on the Internet.

Le père de Michel travaille dans un hôtel.

Will the un change to d' in the negative form? 

My questions is why the correct answer is "une petite place..." instead of "de petite place" since it's after a negation.

The text above says "different than" - this is an Americanism.  In British English it should read "different from", or (less favoured) "different to."  However the words are spelt in British English.  I am nitpicking, but isn't this par for the course?! 

Please could we have English translations of the dictation passages? A dictionary does not always help with some of the vocabulary used e.g. 'rustre' 

Does "des lèvres minces" also work?