French language Q&A Forum

I am curious about the construction of ...fait de lui...  Why not ...lui fait...?  It seems to me that 'him', in the English, is the indirect object of faire while Français is the direct object.  I used ...lui fait..., which was not one of the accepted translations.   Why?

"En effet, ce qui a grandement contribué à la notoriété du lac champenois, c'est le fait que chaque année, en octobre-novembre, les grues cendrées y fassent étape par milliers."

Just a question about the mood here : I would have preferred to see le fait que followed by the indicative here, as it is expressing a certainty, not something uncertain/ a supposition.

Opinions anyone ?

Thanks. Paul.

Bonjour,

A quoi sert le « quoi » à la fin du quatrième paragraphe ?

Je vous remercie. 

Diane

As stated in the lesson if you are emphasizing something in the past "en train de" can be used.  Therefore if you are emphasizing "Henri was having a nap when his boss came in "

"Henri était en train de faire une sieste ..." should be acceptable

The directions tell us that the narrator has a typical accent from Marseille. I had no problem understanding him, with the exception of the final phrase: "surtout quand on joue contre Paris." With the liaison, the word "on" sounds like "tous/tout" or even possibly "tu" but certainly not the standard pronunciation of "on". I wanted to write "on" since that made more sense, but went with "tous", which of course was wrong. (I knew that if I wrote "on" and it was correct, that I would be less likely to remember than if I wrote the wrong word.)

My question: Was this a mispronunciation of "on" or is this an example of the Marseille accent?

Merci

I am just wondering why 's'envolait' (a one-0ff event), when above this sentence you had written 'Il a travaillé extrêmement dur', which would have been over a much longer time period. 

I was actually looking for a tutorial here, maybe I'm expecting too much...

I'm confused when to substitute use le, la, or y, my test result says "Have you had your coffee yet?"

So the tutorial is:

"You've already learned that the pronoun y is used to mean there (See Y = There (adverbial pronoun)).

Now here is another usage of y."

This pretty much tells me nothing.

I was doing an Alevel french translation and encountered this. I could guess the meaning ‘24 free services are offered’ but I don’t get why the word order is like this. 

I'm being very picky with the punctuation here (but then again the little robot is often very picky about my punctuation, especially in the dictations haha). In the first sentence there should be a comma (and not a full-stop) in between "un petit déjeuner différent" and "ce qui peut rendre les matins un peu compliqués". (The corresponding English sentence did have the comma here.)

Should the line in the lesson stating:  

pires / mauvais / mauvaises  ->  les pires / les plus mauvais / les plus mauvaises

Instead be stated as:  

mauvais / mauvaises  ->  pires / plus mauvais / plus mauvaises -> les pires / les plus mauvais / les plus mauvaises