French language Q&A Forum

Do the singular names that refer to groups take the same conjugation like (il/elle) or like (ils/elles) 

Ex: is it la famille est or la famille sont ?

This discussion has me confused- it seems contradictory.  The question was L'année ______ Napoléon a été sacré empereur.  I knew that 'où' would be correct, but from comments in the thread it stated that 'pendant laquelle' would also be correct.  So I tried that but it was marked wrong.  I'm also confused as to whether 'dans laquelle' would be ok.  There are comments in the thread that imply it is ok, but others that it "doesn't sound right".  Can someone clarify?  Thanks 

Why is it not leurs médailles when there is more than one medal?

Bonjour,

I recently did an exercise where I learnt about when colour adjectives stay the same in French, e.g. "When the colour is described by a phrase containing two or more words". The phrase was "la veste bleu canard".

Here though the word "blanches" does agree with "pages" and "alternées", which I thought were the words "blanches" is describing.

I would just like to know the reason for the agreement in that phrase.

Merci :)

What is the difference between devoir in Le Conditionnel Passé and L'imparfait?

For example: Where do these two questions differ?

1. Tu devais fermer la porte à clé.

2. Tu aurais dû fermer la porte à clé.

And please don't simply translate them into English. Paraphrase would be better for me to understand. S'il vous plaît !

I am not sure why the subjunctive is used here.  I understand that trouver takes indicative in the affirmative, but subjunctive if negative.  Here it is affirmative, so presumably the word étrange is causing the change in tense.  Perhaps because étrange has a negative connotation, or perhaps simply because it is an adjective, as in être étrange que ..

Is there a difference in usage between these three translations for "it took me an hour to do something":

"Il m'a fallu une heure pour faire qch"

"J'ai mis une heure pour faire qch"

"Ça m'a pris une heure pour faire qch"

Thank you in advance

In the translation of ” and I'm skint [US: broke] because of all the gifts that I must buy”, they use the expression ”à cause de” for because of.  I was wondering if "en raison de" could be substituted for "à cause de".  I tried it but it wasn't accepted.  Is there a subtle difference that I don't understand? 

En Italien on utilise le mot au pluriel (les feux d'artifice) pour indiquer un spectacle pyrotechnique (en effet il y a plusiers feux...). Est-ce qu'il faut l'utiliser toujours au singulier en Francais? Merci beaucoup de votre reponse!