French language Q&A Forum

The use of partitive vs definite articles continues to be confusing to me, such as in this phrase in the second to last paragraph, "Un lien d'avenir, grâce à l'engagement ".  It is translated as, "A link to the future, thanks to the commitment," . Why is d'avenir used and not à l'avenir?  And why à l'engagement and not d'engagement?

Pourquoi on dit" il vient à la canne" pas " au canne"?

Hi,

I'm curious of how to distinguish "Ils les leur envoient." and "Il les leur envoie" while listening? They sound same in pronunciation.

There was a sentence about an Emily,that was given to me,  and I translated it, but the test had translated another phrase "Ici, je suis plus independante". Obviously the Emily phrase did not belong in this paragraph...just so you know...

Bonjour! I was wondering why the verb acheter is as achetées rather than acheté ? Do we know that the person who bought the boots is female or is this another rule that I may have missed ?

Merci :)

Why must I have a circumflex on the i for quoi?

I don't understand how to use indirect object? 

I am a bit confused about when an extra pronoun comes in to inverted question forms.  I thought that "What does Paul want?" would be "Que Paul veut-il?".  Similarly with "What are the children drawing?", I was expecting "Que les enfants dessinent-ils?