#’As a (noun)’ -> ’(Noun)’ || de/des pluriel

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heavy hillBOT
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de/des pluriel

versed adder
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Sorry, I had question #2.

When can I use just the noun like "Enfant..." as in "As a child..."? I tried feeding these two sentences into Google Translate to get "As a (noun), I was..." -> "(noun), j'étais..."

  1. Adulte/Adolescent/Étudiant works ("Adulte, j'étais...")
  2. Étant âge kind works? ("Étant âge, j'étais...")
  3. Médecin/Mother/Parent/God don't ("En tant que médecin...")
image.png
heavy hillBOT
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’As a (noun)’ -> ’(Noun)’

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As a (noun)’ -> ’(Noun), de/des pluriel

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’As a (noun)’ -> ’(Noun)’ || de/des pluriel

main loom
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Because 'beaucoup de' is a fixed expression, just like 'combien de', etc. It does not change based on gender or quantity.

main loom
versed adder
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When do you get to say just "Enfant, ..."?
In the screenshot above, "As a child" was in the context of speaking in a past PoV.

main loom
stuck gale
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This phenomenon happens anytime the preposition (!!!) "de" pops up, though it's most commonly noticed with expressions of quantity
This is because you're confusing the preposition "de" (which is invariable, and typically means "of/about/from") with the partitive "du, de la, des" (which roughly means "some")
When the partitive would follow the preposition "de", it would result in weird things like "de du", "de des" etc, which is ugly and sounds bad (and otherwise just didn't evolve that way) so we only keep the preposition "de"
Having "des" would actually be the preposition "de" + the definite article "les", so "of/from/about THE", which you're not saying "I read a lot of THE books" here (but would be a valid sentence! Just different meaning)

stuck gale