Spanish language Q&A Forum

I've listened over and over and can't hear the Y in "José y María". 

Is it not there or am I just unable to hear it? 

I don't understand what the following excerpt from the lesson is supposed to mean:

Can you please clarify what this means in prose rather than abreviated notation?

In this quiz question (Elia no va a empezar el curso este año ________ va a tener un año sabático.) it seems to me that "pero" works just as well as "sino que". It doesn't seem to be a clear distinction between pero and sino que - it seems they both can be right. In one sense, you are adding a new idea/action of taking a sabbatical & should use pero, or you can think of the sabbatical as a substitution for beginning classes and use sino que. Why is sino que "correct" and pero ïncorrect"? 

For example:  Nosotros nos reímos siempre con esa película.   We always laugh at that movie.  I would have never known to use "con."  I would have chosen "a."

And, Ustedes se ríen de los niños.  You laugh at the children.  Again, I would have chosen "a" instead of "de."  Why "con" in one sentence and "de" in another?

Will there be lessons on how to choose the correct preposition, or is it a matter of memorising the conjunction with the noun?

Like ‘como uvas’ , can we say ‘yo como uvas’ too, and why is there no ‘I’?

Hi. There is an exact same question in the quiz as there is in this lesson. When I put the correct answer from this lesson, it was marked as wrong.