An English learner vs English articles (again) Hello italki community, Could you please help me with a tricky article (it's from the book - The Dead Mountaineer's Inn, chapter 1). "It was all completely how Zgut had told me it would be. Only I couldn’t see a(*) dog anywhere". So a man (a police inspector) arrives to the hotel that his co-worker(Zgut) recommended and described to him. He finds everything exactly as Zgut told him - the owner, the inn, the valley etc, but he could not see A dog, but why A dog? why not THE dog? It's true that the reader doesn't know anything about this dog, this is the first mention of this dog in the book, but the inspector knows about it, and he knows that there is one special dog somewhere, he looks to find it, how he can say - I couldn't see A dog anywhere? He should have said - I couldn't see THE dog anywhere, that special dog that Zgut had told me about. Or maybe in this situation both articles a and the are good? Thank you.

Hello italki community, Could you please help me with a tricky sentence - "They will be taken a photo of next week." 1) I am not sure what the meaning of it, is it that a photo of some people will be taken in the next week or google's version - some people(they) will take a photo of the next week? 2) Is it grammatically correct? 3) For me it would be better if there were - in, "they will be taken IN a photo of next week". Thank you very much.

Hello italki community. Could you please help me with two questions: 1) I am going through a french course now. On the image from it (below) the word argent is in the second feminine group, but my dictionary says that argent is masculine, LE argent, but because the word starts with A, we write L'argent, but in my opinion this word should still be in the first masculine group or not? 2) how french native speakers define whether a word is masculine or feminine, how they test and find out its gender? (For example, in my native Russian, to define a word's gender, all we need is to try to say - mon argent or ma argent (of course in russian), and by the way how it sounds to my russian ear, it becomes clear which gender this word is). Thank you.

An English learner vs a native speaker (again) :) Hello amazing italki community. Could you please help me with the next question. Two native sentences - "New Zealand broke off from Australia about 80 million years ago. And this was(1) before most mammal groups had(2) really diversified." The event N1(New Zealand broke off) was before(earlier than) the event N2(mammals diversified). And I have thought to this moment that in order to emphasize that one event was earlier than the other one, we need to use past perfect(had), so I would say this sentence like - "And this had been before most mammal groups really diversified". Is this correct or not? Thank you.

To have been or to be, or may be both? Hello amazing italki community, Could you please help me with the next two native sentences - N1 The holy grail - is the cup believed to have been(*) used by Jesus Christ at his last meal. N2 Galileo seems to have been(**) the first person to realize that there is no such thing as an absolute speed. 1) For some reason (I don't uderstand why) I want to say "the cup believed to BE used by..." and "Galileo seems to BE ...". Can I? or is it incorrect or maybe it slightly changes the meaning of the sentences? 2) What the writer of the sentences wanted to stress or to underline by using "have been", whether it is that the cup was used for some time, for some period before? and that Galileo is still regarded as the first person and no one doubts his achievement?

A problem with "went off" in the sentence - "We had just smelled smoke when the fire alarm went off" My dictionary gives two appropriate translations: 1) to shoot - A gun goes off every day. 2) to end - The concert went off well. Whether it's for - the fire alarm suddenly started to work or the fire alarm turned off. Could you please help to solve it?

Could you please decode the following " 's " My brother's married Whether it's for 1) My brother is married or 2) My brother has married And would it help if the sentence had the ending My brother's married to a doctor. Thank you very much

Help me to decrypt "he's", please A native English sentence - This is the third or fourth time he's(*) stayed with me, the owner said. This 's (*), it is for - he has stayed or - he is stayed? Can I use - "he is stayed" or should I always say "he is stayING"? Thank you for your help.

A native English piece of text - I joined the school basketball club. There I had the chance to hone my skills against some of (1) the older pupils. Then I joined the school basketball team. There were 22 of us and we competed against (2) children from other schools in the same town. Honestly, I do not know why there is an article in (1) and no article in (2). I know which older pupils in (1) the author means, but I also can figure out what children the author means in (2) - the children from other basketball school teams when the author was in his own. Would it be a mistake for an English native listener to hear me saying this text but with exchange - ... to hone my skills against some of (1) older pupils ... we competed against (2) the children from other schools in the same town? Thank you very much for your help with English articles.