French language Q&A Forum

"C'est une petite lampe de bureau en forme de phare breton. "

"C'est très joli ! " 

I am reading

"C'est" vs "Il/Elle est" to say it is/she is/he is in French

Based on that,  I am thinking this:  we have a specific item here, not a general subject like "La science", 

so  we can't use 2a - c'est  for general, unspecific statements and opinions

so why isn't it using : 2b "il est/elle est  for statements and opinions related to specific things"

= Elle est très jolie.

Thanks Paul.

Because "gens" is "people" - plural - I put "...les gens qui sortent constamment leurs portables de leurs poches". Is there anything in the pronuncation that I missed that showed it was definitely singular? Or is it a rule in french that you would always say "they took their phone from their pocket" unless they all owned several phones and were taking them out of more than one pocket each? Or...was my answer plausibly a correct hearing?

Hello,

I don't see any mention of how to conjugate verbs with these pronouns? Do you always assume they are singular + masculin ? Or are there any special cases (I can't think of one so I'm asking in case somebody knows)?

Thank you.

In the sentence,"Selon les témoins que j'ai interviewés, et aussi incroyable que cela paraisse, un hélicoptère se serait posé dans la cour de promenade de la prison et La Fuite serait monté à bord avant qu'il ne redécolle, tout ça en quelques minutes à peine !", I don't understand the use of the present tense of redécoller when we are discussing something that happened in the past in particular when it is preceded by two past perfect verbs, se poser and monter.  Also, why is ne inserted before redécoller?

The first sentence,  "il faut vraiment que l'on discute de ta mère"  is the contraction  l'on for "le" or "la" ?  I still don't get why it is even needed.  Would it not work to say, "...qu'on disute de ta mère"  which then maps to English as "that we discuss about your mother". 
I'm guessing that it's a direct object pronoun, but then why isn't "de ta mére"  the object of the sentence?

In the follow sentance someone is reporting back what was said to them. 

"donc, au beau milieu de la nuit tu serais allé boire un verre d'eau et tu aurais vu une soucoupe volante dans le jardin, excuse-moi!" 

Why is the conditional being used here instead of the passe compose. And if I were to speak this sentance using the passe compose would it be incorrect. Thanks.