French language Q&A Forum

On the phrase On ne doit pas parler la bouche pleine, how come avec is not necessary to translate it to "with the mouth full"?

Bonjour, 

We know that indefinite articles "un/une/des" become "de" in negative form with the exception of verb être and verbs of states. But, does this rule also apply to the negative of interrogative sentence? 

For example: 

Il mange une pomme. -> Il ne mange pas de pomme. 

Is the following also true? 

Est-ce qu'il mange une pomme ? -> Est-ce qu'il ne mange pas de pomme ? and 

Mange-t-il une pomme ? -> Ne mange-t-il pas de pomme ? 

I didn't find any reference about negative interrogative and indefinite articles so have to ask to clear my doubt. Also, please confirm the case with negative interrogative and partitive articles. 

merci beaucoup. 

Hi, seems like the verb tomber most definitely belongs to the set of verbs which can take either auxiliary in the passé composé, depending on their transitive/intransitive usage.

As an example of such a verb, see your very helpful page here:

Monter can be used with avoir or être in Le Passé Composé depending on its meaning in French

Could you please confirm that tomber indeed deserves such a page, and in general remark on whether about 20 other verbs deserve one also (albeit not very commonly used ones?)

Thank you!

The sentence to be translated:

Plus, his songs were extraordinarily varied…..

The correct answer:

De plus, ses chansons étaient si extraordinairement variées….

Why is si required here ? I left it out and was marked wrong.

La réponse à la question deux est "Il y a au moins 1 200 variétés de fromage en France". Mais, en 1962, Charles de Gaulle a dit "Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage?".

Pourriez-vous  expliquer l'écart entre 246 variétés de fromage et 1 200 variétés de fromage, s'il vous plaît? A moins que la France n'ait développé 954 nouvelles variétés de fromages depuis 1962, la différence réside, vraisemblablement, dans la définition de "variété".

I've been wondering if there are definite rules as to whether one adds a "de" sometimes, but sometimes I go awry with an incorrect guess. At present it seems to me that a noun after the second "de" is safe enough. Am I right? The help from the quick lessons is immensely helpful, but thus far I haven't found one which would solve my problem with rules for the 'De's'.

Clive 

"It is green" still gets "il est vert" marked wrong, despite the fact that it appears to refer to a specific item (as opposed to using "c'est vert," the preferred answer, which would indicate something more general--despite no indication of such in the sentence). Tired of having my score set back (I had to use up most of my free quizzes for the month to make up for this). Please fix. Would also be nice to have the "report it" button on the page that people seem to say exists but which I have never seen.

https://french.kwiziq.com/my-languages/french/tests/results/15218594/system

When I click on the text "et installent projecteurs et caméras", the translation you provide is "and install projectors and videocameras". There are several ways to translate "projecteur" into English: it can also mean floodlight, spotlight and searchlight, besides the obvious translation "projector". 

They weren't entertaining Marshall Jodl by showing him movies. And even if they were, why would they need more than one projector?  Given the context, a much more likely translation of "projecteurs" is "floodlights". 

I listened to the first phrase many time, and it definitely sounds like she says "et" and not "and."  

Could you forward this technical issue to the correct department?   I like to keep a copy of the exercise available while I am actually doing the exercise so that I can refer back to the suggested vocabulary if necessary.  Sometimes this works, sometimes not.  In this exercise, I was not able to bring up two copies at the same time.  Even after starting the exercise, I was not able to bring up the page with the vocabulary while retaining my place in the exercise itself.  My position in the exercise would disappear and I would see the original page.  If I hit start on that page, it would jump to my position where I left off.  It was impossible to keep the original page and do the exercise simultaneously.  Thanks for looking into this.  Send me an email if you require additional details.