French language Q&A Forum

I appreciate this question has been answered but it hasn’t been answered in a way that makes sense to me. Kindly don’t point me to a lesson on this because I have read the lessons already. 

Based on the lessons I have read, neuf and neuve means never been used.  Subsequently, if I say ‘I have bought a new bike’, in English it means I have bought a brand-new bike. If the intention was to say I have bought a bike new to me but not brand new, then the sentence should refer to it being secondhand bike.

Looking at all the discussions below, it seems to me the sentence should be altered so there is no confusion about whether we are talking about a bike that is new to a person or a brand-new bike that has never been used. 

I've encountered a number of sentences in KwizIQ about "going to the ball." Is that something that is common in France? I'm wondering because I've only encountered a ball in the Cinderella fairy tale and not in real life. But maybe that's just the social milieu in which I live!

Why past tense is used here? Why shouldn't be present tense as she still like playing the instrument at present time.

This exercise only accepts "Je ne sais pas quoi dire" as translation, but I just wanted to confirm that "Je ne sais que dire" is also correct, or is there some difference in meaning between the two that excludes the latter?

What does "I was in a line this morning" mean?

Is it not a hard rule that verbs take être when followed by a preposition? In this phrase, I used avoir, which was wrong but there is no preposition that I can see: Quand vous y (êtes or avez) retourné, le corps avait disparu. Seems like retourner is followed by a noun. I use this method to determine quickly which auxiliary to use so would like to know if there are exceptions. Many thanks. 

i get it wrong every time, moneu is countable surely?

a few is sometimes qielque and sometimes peu, i seem to have a mental block with this, even comments here not making it clear. any one got a very basic explaination please? or a definition of if something is countable, surely everything can be counted

Relatedly, in an inverted question like "La fille a-t-elle un chat ?" , is the placement of the subject at the beginning done solely for emphasis?  If so, would it be uncommon for a comma to appear after it?

[Edit] As usual, I found the answer after posting the question...

Apparently, when the subject is a noun or name, that subject remains in place and is repeated in the form of a subject pronoun.