French language Q&A Forum

With the above examples the final 's' in 'je suis a' is silent. But when saying 'Je suis aller..' I have heard the s pronounced? Is there a rule for when the final 's' is silent or not?

Hi, I'm a beginner in French and I always get confused in using Je suis and J'ai. In my head (which thinks in English), sentences like 'I am 20 years old' is not 'Je suis vingt ans' but 'J'ai vingt ans' which literally means 'I have 20 years old'. Is there are hard rule when to use Je suis or J'ai in a sentence?

I think that since the spelling reforms introduced into schools in France in 2016, the circonflexe over the letter "i" is now optional in words like "s'il vous plaît (plait)". I believe that also applies to the word disparaître. But in this exercise it is shown as an error if we type "disparaitre" without the little hat. 

s'assoir is having a blue 'e' correction added, although both spellings - s'asseoir and s'assoir - are correct.

Salut,

How to say "I am Russian"? in masculine and feminine form?

This exercise is broken into more audio files than usual. This means that each file is shorter, and this is very helpful as I listen to each section many times, usually just to hear a couple of difficult parts that I’m having trouble understanding. I thought it would be useful to let you have this feedback! :)

I have a question which comes from this exercise but is not directly related to the subject matter perhaps but is a listening issue that I have come across before and there must be a rule that I don't know about or that I do and just don't recognise the context: 

In reflexive verb video, which is in the last set of "your practice" offered after you complete the last written section; at 7'40" in the video, the lady says: "Et puis, qu'est qu' on fait quant on utilise l'imperatif..." but instead of saying "quand" she pronounces the "t" as if it were "quante" ...So I wonder if you could tell me what the rule is for pronouncing "quand" with a "t" at the end, since quant, is of course a different word...

I hope that makes sense. I look forward to hearing from you. 

Best regards,

Michael

Hello - I am confused about the construction with etre and en retard. Are both the constructions below correct? From my understanding of the video and Chris' reply to another question, only the 2nd one is correct. However, the first is used throughout the lesson.

2. Je suis arrivé en retard de dix minutes. [construction in video]

I understand when to use the qui/que part and have no problem. I cannot wrap my brain around when to use ce qui instead of qui and ce que instead of que can someone explain?