"De nouveaux manteaux"

[jakesail]

can someone explain why it's de instead of des?

[siebolt]

because of the adjective between the partitive article and the noun. It would have been "des manteaux jaunes" It is not a cast iron rule, but use it and it will save a lot of irritation with duolingo.

[wataya]

Yes, it's best to go on like siebolt said. We had a lengthy in detail discussion of the topic some months ago with lots of quotes from all sorts of dictionaries. Unfortunately, I can't find it anymore.

[siebolt]

I got my "rule" from that discussion.

[anders.knudsen]

I don't understand the rule here. Can anyone elaborate?

[wataya]

I found our former discussion: http://duolingo.com/#!/comment/27813
Happy reading ;-)

[amuzulo]

Why isn't "De nouveau manteau" correct? Is the pronunciation different?

[jakesail]

The pronunciation of de (da) and des (day) is slightly different

[amuzulo]

Ah, of course, just like le and les. Makes sense... thanks so much!

[martinkunev]

Why plural? What's wrong with "De nouveau manteau"?

[reyzvolution]

I'm wondering about this, too. The pronunciation of nouveau manteau and nouveaux manteaux is the same (at least to my ear). How are we supposed to know which form (singular or plural) follows de?

Or is it because de here means "some"? That if it's singular it would be un nouveau manteau?

[jakesail]

I think since manteaux is plural. The singular form would be manteau