French language Q&A Forum

Why can't it be - "On ne doit pas que penser à soi." ? [One must not only think about oneself.]

And doesn't this translate to  - On ne doit pas penser qu'à soi  -- "One must not think that about oneself." (because 'penser que' - to think that) 

Please explain.

My biggest mistakes at this simple point in A1 are because I don't know the word as opposed to missing the grammar rules (parce que, par, oeuvres, etc.). When I make mistakes the lessons recommended are almost always about the grammar -- are there lessons or suggestions for picking up more vocabulary? (although I'm suspecting that just doing exercises is the best way to get exposed to more words :-) )

While translating I came accross this sentence " L'homme n'attend plus ses opinions, sa conscience, son bonheur que de l'ordre d'un autre" and  I don't understand the meaning of the construction of " n'attendre plus.... que de l'ordre d'un autre". 

Thank you for your help!!

This was a great exercise. Just wanted to flag that sometimes after submitting responses, no corrections displayed and I was therefore unable to mark myself.

In what part of this sentence could you add "nearly", and what is the word for this? If I said, "My parents have been married for 20 years", or "Mes parents sont mariés il y a vingt ans", how would I say "My parents have been married for nearly 20 years" ? Does this require a different expression entirely? For context, I would be explaining that their wedding anniversary is next month.

I am a bit confused on the contexts you would use this, because it feels like a bit curt ? Would it be OK to use it for example, when you do a favor to someone that they want to repay, and you respond with this ? Or might it come across as a bit too aggressive ?

Not sure if anyone is gonna read this, but for those that are from countries where a billion means a million million, french uses the word billion as well. 

This page confused me a bit since Spanish is my first language and in that language we generally use billion the same way as French, whereas the one thousand million meaning is mostly used in the English speaking world.

I wrote "Oui, on a papoté pendant une heure." instead of "Oui, on a discuté/bavardé pendant une heure." It marked it as incorrect. I think bavardé is closer than discuté for 'chatted', but I feel like 'papoté' suits well for the context. Am I wrong?

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 :)