French language Q&A Forum

Hello everyone :)

Just a small question, why do you use "faire une escale?" instead of "avoir une escale"?

because it's not "make the stopover".

Thank you in advance for your advices and responses.

When should we use "y" and when should we use là for places

A correction for the phrase "quand j'essaie de manger" changed my spelling "essaie" to "essaye" and I do not understand why. Thank you for your explanation.

usually we say : Je fais du vélo  OR  Je roule en vélo?

I used 'du coup' instead of 'donc' but it wasn't given as an option.

Why do we use j'ai toujours eu for "I have always had"?  My understanding is the passe' compose' of avoir implies "I got" more than "I had".  If we want to say "I had" we should use j'avais.  

The speakers in this dialogue (a tutor and an adult student who already know each other) used the inversion form to pose questions. Wouldn’t we expect them to use the less formal « est-ce que » form in these circumstances?

Hello,

Is there is a reason why some words require a 'consolidated' partitive with the definite article (du / de la) and some only require the 'unconsolidated' partitive (de)? Such as "je bois du vin' vs. nous buvons 2 litres d'eau par jour'?

I am trying to come up with a little rule to make things easier to learn / remember, but it doesn't seem that it works like that.

Thanks,

Alex

I notice nearly all the subjects in these examples are proper nouns (with one qui?). When using a subject pronoun instead, would it become ce /c’ to avoid the il/elle + determiner construction ?

For example:  

 Elle est intelligente —> c’est la fille la plus intelligente de la classe