French language Q&A Forum

French accents in the translation page were not available, and that makes me loose points. How can I get them considering I have an English keyboard

How is «I eat neither apples nor pears»  in the test I just did, significantly different to  «I like neither cheese nor milk»? There is nothing at all that I can see in the construction of these sentences that gives a clue that the first is «Je ne mange ni pommes ni poires» while the second is «Je n'aime ni le fromage ni le lait» ie one uses definite article and one doesn't. If there is something special about the verb «aimer» or «manger» this needs to be detailed - but it is not. Perhaps one of the translations is 'wrong', noting that the French could be «I eat/I like» or «I am eating/I am liking». Nothing in this lesson clarifies this either, despite multiple comments and complaints that it is poorly discussed, and the examples are unsatisfactory. 

When to use de alone or when to use de with the article le or la - that is the question

How does this translate to "Chaque été, ma famille et moi..." ? 

"...nous passions nos vacances..." wasn't presented as a possible translation. Am I missing something here? Thanks.

Instead of saying, 'nous avons reste des predateurs', why couldn't we write, 'nous avons demure des predauteurs'?

I understand that the lesson is focusing on one skill but it would seem that if the student got the concept correct but used a different word that was correct, it should be accepted.  (unless of course demurer should not have been used in this lesson instead of rester).

Thank you!  I love Kwiziq (and I had sent an email previously about how some of the feedback from the lessons could be enhanced).

'As for "avoir peur", it's a fixed expression always followed by the preposition de (literally to have fear of), so when used with the definite article les, de + les contract into des :
Il a peur des chiens. => He's scared of (the) dogs. 
In the negative, as we said above, les remains the same, so it applies to its contracted form as well: Il n'a pas peur des chiens.'

Does this apply only to fixed expressions ending 'de' as in the case above?

I was wondering why it's "de" and not "des" in this sentence? I know that if there was an adjective before "cartes," then you'd use "de" (de bonnes cartes), but I can't figure out why it is used here instead of "des".  Merci d'avance pour votre réponse.  

I no longer get the written text to accompany the spoken words . I found it useful to be able to compare