bosley8120

[gilded nexus]

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.

[rain bridge]

For one, that question is not formed correctly

« La Belgique » in that sentence would be the subject so « quel » isn't right because it doesn't have anywhere to go. Since we're asking an adjective here, using « quel » isn't good because it needs an object, not an adjective. There's also the issue of the inversion being done incorrectly: When you have inversion where the subject is not a pronoun, you have to restate the subject in pronoun form. For example, if I said, « La professeure arrivera à 09h », that in question form would be « Quand la professeure arrivera-t-elle ? » or « À quelle heure arrivera-t-elle, la professeure ? » That « -t- » appears in the third person when the verb ends in a vowel and the pronoun starts with a vowel.

Secondly, « avoir l'air » refers to appearance whereas your question vis-à-vis Belgium seems more like your experience being there or something like that. In that case, we'd prefer another verb like « trouver » like « Comment as-tu trouvé la Belgique ? » or maybe « penser de qqch » like « Que penses-tu de la Belgique ? »

If we want to use « avoir l'air » in a question of appearance, we tend to use the noun version : « Il a l'air de + nom ». In question form, that'd be: « De quoi a-t-il l'air ? / De quoi est-ce qu'il a l'air ? / Il a l'air de quoi ? »

[wind spoke]

sorry for the late reply

Ah i thought that the "sympa" in "l'air sympa" is a noun, and that would be the reason why i'm struggling in "quel air a la belgique"

j'ai compris tout, merci beaucoup !

[rain bridge]

Ah, yes, when we’re talking about verbal expressions like this, we have to analyse the whole thing and not just one element of it

For example, you may have learnt that nouns must be accompanied by articles. That’s why you can’t just say « J’ai thé » but « J’ai du thé »; you have to use the partitive article here. Then you see the verbal expression « avoir peur de qqch » and you know that « peur » is a noun, so why is it not « avoir de la peur de qqch / avoir la peur de qqch »? Well, « avoir peur » is already a fixed verbal expression so you can’t say that this « peur » is the same as the « peur » in « C’est bien d’avoir de la peur dans la vie (It’s good to have some fear in life) »