French language Q&A Forum

Can someone explain the structure of this phrase: "j'ai cru à une blague de mes amis"? I would've thought the translation would be more like, "J'ai cru que c'était une blague de mes amis".

Hello, in the example "Au cas où vous vous demanderiez où elle est, elle est allée au marché" the translation is "In case you're wondering where she is, she went to the market." How would the sentence change if we want to say "In case you were wondering where she is, she went to the market."? 

What about the example "In case you get hungry, I made you a sandwich", how can that be changed to  "In case you were hungry, I made you a sandwich" in the French translation? 

Does par-dessus imply movement over, or could au-dessus be used as well? C'est-à dire, est-ce qu'on pourrait dire "Le ballon a volé au dessus de la barrière"?  

J'aime beaucoup les discussions ici, merci.  

I was not familiar with this expression. Vivement que .... 

Vivement que je puisse faire des voyages cette année, for example?

Merci! 

Dear Aurélie,

These writing exercises are a true exercise in humility.  I test in the 90's for C1 grammar but I consistently fail (often get less than 50%) in the writing exercises.  It took me over a year to accept this - I always would find my performance very disappointing and avoided the exercises (tip to others: don't avoid.  They will improve your French, painfully and slowly in my case).  The writing exercises  are excellent and introduce a wide variety of expressions and of contexts, but perhaps students should be forewarned that one's grammar level on Kwiziq will be higher than one's performance on the translation/writing exercises.  

Why is it sometimes « ne pas de » plus infinitive, « ne pas a » plus infinitive, or in other examples simply « ne pas »  plus infinitive?  Can someone explain the reason for the use of de or a, or their omission?  Thank you. 

Je ne comprends pas la raison que vous avez écrit "C'est très ennuyeux". Est-ce que "C'est très ennuyant" est aussi correcte?

I asked about this previously and I am still confused.

I did a quiz before and it asked how you would ask "what is this" or something to that effect. And it didn't accept "quelle est..." as the correct answer.

The answer I had received is that quelle needs to be followed by a noun. However, previously, my French teachers would say questions like "Quelle est la date?", so I was very confused. Is that phrase incorrect?

Furthermore, I was doing another quiz and got this question:

Quel est le nom ___ restaurant ?

And I was confused why you could ask "what is the name of the restaurant" and use "quel est" and not "qu'est-ce que c'est" or "c'est quoi".

Basically, I'm not understanding if/when you can use "quel est.." or "quelle est..".

Thank you!

I am looking at the phrase 'toute la nourriture que j'aimais le plus au monde' and wondering why it's 'au monde' and not 'du monde'. According to Larousse, 'au monde' 'renforce une négation : Personne au monde ne peut dire le contraire'; whereas 'du monde' 'renforce un superlatif : Tout s'est passé le mieux du monde'.