French language Q&A Forum

I would like to know why retenir means "to learn" here and not apprendre

Why is tu t-appelles Gary incorrect please ? 🤔

Please Kwiziq do not be like Duolingo and be inflexible with the words allowed/considered correct. Faire de la soupe et préparer de la soupe are synonymous and both should be correct.

"La fois dernière" = Noun

"La dernière fois" = Adverb & noun

I got a question wrong, looked at this lesson again and got confused by the whole "followed by a clause" thing (tricky to remember) and I thought that maybe this would be a easier way for me to remember it but I don't want to be lead down the wrong track.

 Why does the verb 'détester' not require the ne explétif in this sentence:  Les filles détestent que vous les embêtiez. 

The first sentence,  "il faut vraiment que l'on discute de ta mère"  is the contraction  l'on for "le" or "la" ?  I still don't get why it is even needed.  Would it not work to say, "...qu'on disute de ta mère"  which then maps to English as "that we discuss about your mother". 
I'm guessing that it's a direct object pronoun, but then why isn't "de ta mére"  the object of the sentence?

Can you use 'tandis que' instead of 'pendant que'?

Couldn't loisir be used for hobby or is hobby more common (another English word adopted by the French!)?