French language Q&A Forum

Your question: What does "Je voudrais trois douzaines de pommes, s'il vous plaît" mean?

This is confusing me... in English  three dozen, means three dozen or 36 but if I am reading this correctly, in French means around 3 dozen or around 36... I have been penalised for saying about 36 and not choosing the 3 dozen which means precisely 36 and should, therefore, be wrong.. or am I missing something?

many of my answers were right but you gave me wrong for eg i typed en haut de la tout eiffel you said en somme de la tour eiffel but here again en haut its correct you need to fix this

Is the S silent for both?  The pronounciation seems to differ with the speakers/examples.  The woman speaking the following does not pronounce the S:  Les ordinateurs deviennent de moins en moins chers.  But the woman speaking the following sentence does:  Nous y allons de moins en moins souvent.

I wonder how one is supposed to arrive at jeté mon dévolu for settled on.

 I chose choisir which seems to me to capture the sense but wasn’t credited.7

Pourquoi on utilise comme elle ne doit pas sortir. Pourquoi pas ainsi que où pour que ?

Would it just be ...ce beau sport. ? Thanks

Recently while talking to a friend in French (she is native) I wanted to say something like "I never knew you used to do that!" and I used l'imparfait with 'ne ... jamais' and said "Je ne savais jamais..." because I considered it to be something ongoing or habitual in the past.

However she corrected me and said I should either say "Je ne savais pas" or "Je n'ai jamais su". In this instance, yes it probably would have been more proper in English to actually say "I didn't know you used to do that", however for futher investigation I tried translating the following negative statements (which express a habitual/repeated or ongoing situation in the past) and they all returned a translation using passé composé rather than l'imparfait:

"The guy I was dating never let me pay for anything"
"Le gars avec qui je sortais ne m'a jamais laissé payer..."

"I never used to eat olives, but now I'm addicted!"
"Je n'ai jamais mangé d'olives..."

"When she was studying, I would never see her, but now we catch up all the time"  ... etc etc

Is there a rule in french that the sense of "never/jamais" cannot be used in the imperfect past tense? Maybe it's grammtically incorrect and simply saying "I never ate olives" suffices here in French without needing that "used to" nuance that we have in english?

Thanks

The answer to the following question was question was fasses.

Il faut que ________ l'exercice.You must do the exercise.HINT: ¨tu¨ form
I answered "tu fasses de," and it was incorrect.Why is "faire de l'excecice" incorrect?

I think this dictee proves to me that I am in NO WAY ready to consider a vacation in France, where (as I recall) most speakers speak even more rapidly than the lady who read this exercise.  I hadn't been thinking of such a trip anyway (Covid has interfered with so many plans) but I have decided that at this rate I should probably stay home, possibly forever!  

Correction: count money