French language Q&A Forum

"Je n'ai pas de X." 

Should "X" be in the singular form or in the plural? Does it depend on which form it was in in the question? 

eg. "Avez-vous une voiture ?" -> "Je n'ai pas de voiture." but "Avez-vous des chaussures ?" -> "Je n'ai pas de chaussures." ?

What convention is usually used when the prepositions "à" or "de" are before the title of a book that begins with "le" or "les", for example "les miserables?"

Will it follow the same preposition structure? Like au, aux, du, des?

I find the questions which ask things like "If I say "Tu es français.", who am I speaking to: Lucie or Hugo?" quite frustrating, because the gendering of names isn't fixed.  According to https://madame.lefigaro.fr/prenoms/prenom/garcon/lucie, Lucie, whilst predominantely feminine, has been a mixed name for over a century. 

Hi there,

In the examples given in this lesson one of the speakers pronounce "Elle s'assied avec Paul/Elle s'assoit avec Paul" with the d/t at the end.
I thought maybe this was due to having a vowel following it, but on the other examples above there are also "Avec" following the Assied/assoit and omitting the last consonant!

 Any ideas?

Thanks.

Good morning. Is there a trick to hearing the accents over vowels, or do you just have to know where they are in every word? A lot of times I can distinguish the pronunciation of é vs. è, but sometimes I can't tell the difference between e and é, for example. In the text, there's the sentence "" where I can hear é in représentation and théâtrales, but the e in spectacles sounds the same as é in the other two words and doesn't have an accent. Is this something that just comes with a lot of practice? Or do you just sort of need to know the words in advance? 

I know that ils is used for masculine or mixed masculine and feminine groups and elles is used for feminine groups. But what if there are more feminine than masculine objects such as a group of one man and ten women? Would it then be acceptable to use 'elles' to refer to that group or would I still have to use ils even if only thing is masculine?