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When do I use connaître and when do I use savoir?A basic rule of thumb often tought is that savoir is used with facts and connaître is used with people/places. I'd like to propose a slightly revised version of this rule of thumb:
By 'question-inside-a-sentence', I'm talking about the difference between a verb phrase and a noun phrase. In many sentences, it is possible to express a similar meaning with either a verb phrase or a noun phrase: do you know where he lives? vs I don't know how old he is vs  Suggest a change / proposez une modificationContrast these with sentences such as I don't know London, do you know Paul.' It's not obvious what verb phrase (or 'question-in-a-sentence') you'd replace London or Paul with to get a similar meaning. Coming back to French, an essential difference between the two verbs is that:
So what does that mean? Well, it concerns sentences where savoir can be used when you have a 'question inside a senetnece': est-ce que tu sais quelle âge il a? je ne sais pas à quelle heure son train va arriver je ne sais pas où il habite je ne sais pas ce qu'il en pense Suggest a change / proposez une modificationIn these cases, you can't use savoir without also changing the rest
of the sentence. In other words, French people However, if you form sentences with a similar meaning but where a simple noun phrase is involved, then connaître is generally possible: est-ce que tu connais son âge? est-ce que tu connais l'heure d'arrivée prévue de son train? je ne connais pas son adresse je ne connais pas son opion la-dessus Suggest a change / proposez une modificationThe underlined phrases in French are noun phrases and don't contain a verb. (But purely as a matter of translation, you'll see from these examples that it's common to translate them using a verb in English.) Note that these sentences are referring to pretty much 'the same facts': the difference in verb is grammatical rather than to do with whether or not the object is a fact or place.
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