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- Topic: French >
- "Tu es jeune, mon enfant."
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You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters. - Plato
The trick is that the masculine and the feminine of "jeune" are identical.
"Jeun" is a noun only used in the expression "à jeun" meaning "on an empty stomach" or "sober"
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Am I the only one still having trouble with how "mon enfant" is pronounced? I keep having the same mistake, I get confused and hear "non a femme" or something like that. I would want to know if it's just me...
I suggest you train to better hear nasal sounds which in French are : un, in, on, an. If you want to hear another voice and practice, this is what you can do: go to Google/Translations, pick French-English, type the following on the French side: "lundi matin il y a longtemps" (does not mean much (Monday morning a long time ago) but the sounds are in the order given above), then click on the small loudspeaker again and again, until you hear differences, then use the small mike to train.
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You might find Google Translates playback feature inoperative. I seem to have given it a nervous breakdown from trying to figure out what I was saying in French.
Good thing I'm not doing this so I can speak French.
Excellent exercise for hearing difficult sounds in French.
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Only the listening questions are so interesting and new... I'm getting bored of repetition...
I think you may want to learn conjugations as they come, starting with auxiliaries être and avoir:
être: je suis, tu es, il/elle/on est, nous sommes, vous êtes (polite singular and plural), ils/elles sont
avoir: j'ai, tu as, il/elle/on a, nous avons, vous avez (polite singular and plural), ils/elles ont.
Just to be clear, "mon enfant" could be used referring to a FEMALE child, right?
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Use ma with singular feminine nouns and mon with singular masculine nouns. Use mes with plural nouns.
I know l'enfant is defaulted to male because the gender in this sentence is ambiguous. But if you knew the context and you knew you were addressing a girl, could you say "tu es jeune, MA enfant", would this still work or is l'enfant always attached with male possessives - HELP
"ma" is changed to "mon" in front of a feminine word starting with a vowel or a non aspirate H
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une amie - mon/ton/son amie
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une habitude - mon/ton/son habitude
My auto correct typed in "eat" in place of "es", glad it accepted it as a typo.
omg! all this time i thought mon amie meant my friend! as in "bonjour, mon amie!" when the little explanation thing popped up, it said mon amie meant "my girlfriend" because of the masculine possesive word "mon". if it wasn't for duolingo (side note: i am female) i would have gone to france and said to someone "bonjour, mon amie" meaning to say "hello, my friend" but really saying "hello, my girlfriend!" and what if my friend i was talking to was a guy??????????? AAAAAAH!!! Thank you SOOOO much Duolingo! u saved my life!
"female friend" is "une amie/l'amie" and "boyfriend" is "un/le petit ami".
By the way, "girlfriend" is not "amie", but "une/la petite amie" or "une/la copine".
But when you say "Mon ami" (male) it sounds the same, so you are not making a terrible mistake!
French possessive adjectives, just like any other adjectives, agree with the noun they modify and do not give any indication on the owner's gender.
Ma fille (fem) = my daughter
Mon fils (masc) = my son
Mes enfants (plural) = mes enfants
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I don't know why, but this french sentence reminds me of Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem.
"You are old, father William," the young man said, "and your hair has become very white; "And yet you incessantly stand on your head - "Do you think at your age it is right?"
