French language Q&A Forum

Maintenant or désormais? Also I keep making a mistake with prepositions please let me know I put “couvert de la sueur”.

I don’t think the "grand" in the final sentence sounded quite right, more like gros. It was fine in the recording of the whole extract but not in the individual exercise. Or is it my ears?! (Une nouvelle que nous avions accueillie avec grand soulagement !) 

I cannot quite figure out why the verb 'remplir' is in the form 'remplis'. Is it because 'remplis' is used as an adjective?

I notice that the preferred translation of 'which makes him the first Frenchman to be in charge of the ISS' is 'ce qui fait de lui le premier Français en charge de la SSI' rather than 'ce qui en fait le premier ...'. All the grammar books I look at say that en can stand for 'de' plus a person - but I can see that in practice 'en fait' for 'makes him' is almost never said in French. Is it just too literary for this kind of phrase?

I find this lesson unusually long and confusing. Maybe better to break it up into smaller lessons?

When I listen to the entire passage, I clearly hear the word elle in the last sentence.   When I listen to the last sentence as given in the exercise, I hear what sounds like 'on' instead of elle.  I don't have the best ears, but it is what I hear.

A post further down says "soit..soit is used when followed by anything other than a verb". I’ve just done a quiz elsewhere where the answer they wanted was "Soit tu mets du déodorant, soit je te quitte"! Is this a usage that exists but isn’t good French? If so, what’s a better way to express it? I can’t imagine "soit que" is very common and "que" + subjunctive verb seems to be a yes/no situation (eg que tu le mettes ou pas) rather than offering two alternative verbs.

Thank you.

Why is there a "DE" here? Is the expression "fait de qch"?