miketuan

[onyx ember]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

Pro tip: you can rename the thread title with `.tr <thread name>`

Make it descriptive, including relevant context, but also to the point. This way you improve your chances of getting a more relevant and specific answer.

[drifting slate]

The choice of preposition depends entirely on what comes before the preposition

and different verbs/adjectives/expressions use different prepositions

There's not really any logic to it, you just need to memorize the use cases

[brazen idol]

An exception (most of the time) is pour where the primary meaning is ‘in order to/for the purposes of’

[austere ravine]

As for 'facile/difficle à/de', I find that

• À focuses on the direct object
• De focuses on the verb
  Example:

C'est facile de faire des gâteaux.
-> Making cakes is easy.
vs
Ce gâteau est facile à faire.
-> This cake is easy to make
I could be wrong, however.

[drifting slate]

yup, that's right

c'est difficile de conduire -> driving is difficult
c'est difficile à conduire -> it (a car, presumably) is hard to drive

[austere ravine]

Awesome, thanks. ^^

[small stone]

In brief, if the subject is real and personal and the verb that acts on it is after an adjective, à is used. While if the subject is impersonal and an infinitive clause describing an action is after an adjective, de is used, the construction is essentially an inversion of "faire une action est difficile".

[slim bloom]

Thanks for confirming this, I also found that from online sources. And it was actually the existence of "pour" in 2 and 3 that brought me to the original question.
For example, which preposition should I use when translating this to French: "You use a screwdriver to fix a bike"?

[brazen idol]

« pour »

Because it expresses purpose