"Les enfants mangent la soupe."
Translation:The children are eating the soup.
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Perhaps the audio has been changed since this comment, but you can easily tell this is les because of the liaised "z" sound at the end of les.
I'm not sure where this comes up in the lessons, so just in case: a liaison is when an otherwise silent ending consonant (in this case, the "s") is pronounced because the next word starts with a vowel sound. It's doesn't always happen, but it will whenever les is followed by a vowel or a mute h (e.g. les hommes). Also, in this case, the "s" takes on a "z" sound so as to avoid ambiguities with other potential words.
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The same way you distinguish between "he is eating" and "she is eating", or the singular and plural of "sheep" in English--context. The first, second, and third person singular verb endings and the third person plural are the same in speech, but different in writing. In a conversation, if someone said "ils mangent leur dejeuner", you would know that it was the third person plural and not singular because of the "leur", meaning "their". If the person had said "il mange son dejeuner", you would know it was singular by the "son", meaning "his" in this context.
Hopefully that helps clear it up.
Personally, I say "manger de la soupe", and it's the way it is written in my dictionaries. But some people use "Je bois ma soupe", I think it's a little weird, but maybe it depends if your soup is liquid or rather solid, and the way you eat it.
https://fr.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090718172123AA5F8eI
Whenever you're referring to 2 people or more in the "3rd person" who are eating (such as ils = them masculine, elles = them feminine), "mangent" is used.
Whenever you're referring to 1 individual in the 3rd person for il or elle, "mange" is used.
Whenever you're talking to someone in the 2nd person, tu manges (informal) or vous mangez (formal) is used to say "you eat" or "you are eating."
"Nous mangeons" = we're eating.
Je "mange" = I'm eating
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It's a regional difference. Very few people in North America would "drink soup." The way we see it here is that soup is usually eaten with a spoon out of a bowl, whereas drinking refers to something you consume from a glass/cup/mug without the use of cutlery. If someone talked about drinking soup here, the first thing that would come to mind (at least my mind) would be someone drinking broth from a mug, or from a bowl without using a spoon.
I may be wrong (I'm not a native French speaker and my only experience with the French language has been through Duolingo) but I think I've noticed that "les" is pronounced without the "s" unless it is followed by a word that starts with a vowel. So if you're saying "Les garçons" it is pronouced "leh" (or "lay" if that helps, but that's really not the best way to pronounce it). But if you're saying "les enfants" it's prounouced "lez". So far the only pattern I've found is that if the next word after the "les" begins with a consonant you use the traditional "leh" sound, and if the next word begins with a vowel (or an "h") you use the "lez". Native speakers and people who know the real answer please revise my statement and correct me if I'm wrong! Hope this helps!
The reason you hear the difference between fast and slow is probably due to the computer voice. When it reads the whole sentence, it smartly connects them with the "s" sound. But when it does it slow, I think the computer just reads each word individually and doesn't think of the next word, hence no "s" sound on the slow version.
Because "de la" would make it "The children eat soup." The version this is looking for is "The children eat THE soup" which refers to a specific soup, not just soup in general.
The important lesson is not how you would talk about eating soup. The important lesson is understand the difference between using "la" and "de la" (or "le" and "du"). So in reality you could use one or the other (depending on the context) but really the goal is to understand that when "the" is there you need just "le" or "la". And when "some" is implied you use "de la" or "du".
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chcameron- nous mangEons. If you forget the E, the sound will be different and more, this isn't a word.
It says "li" instead of "les". This is wrong, they didn't pronounce les at all.
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blackrose- this is indicative, present tense. Past would be : ils mangèrent or ils ont mangé.
There's nothing to understand. It's only memorization.
As you have in English. "I was" but "They were", you have a conjugation form in French, but the conjugation form changes for every pronoun.
Mangez: for we
Mangent: for they
Mangeons: for we.
Mange: for he/she.
Manges: for you
Please, memorize it there: http://la-conjugaison.nouvelobs.com/du/verbe/manger.php
Il n'y a pas des diferences entre "mange" et "mangent" quand on parle dans les conversations unformelles, la diference est seule dans la langue écrit. Le present progressive (gérondif) est formé par "en" plus le verbe principale à une forme particuliere. Par example "J'en faisant" (I'm doing...). Ou tu peux aussi utiliser le verbe à la forme infinif, que signifie proche la même chose. "Je prépare le repas" signifie la même chose que "J'en preparant le repas".
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It is not correct. In English, the article is implied, and thus isn't necessary, in the sentence "the children (are) eat(ing) soup." In French, the article is not implied and must precede a noun in nearly every instance. So, "the children eat soup" translates into "les enfants mangent de la soupe." "De la" is literally "of the," but is frequently used as a non-specific article pair (the masculine form of which is "du" while the plural is "des"), which translates into "some" (or is just implied) in English.
Short answer: no, it is not OK to skip "la" even if one is being general, and not specific as in "les enfants mangent la soupe."
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Yes, absolutely preposterous that a language-teaching program would teach the correct way to translate things, and distinguish between subtleties in meaning instead of being imprecise and sloppy! ;)
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Pronouncing it the same as in English is fine. The way the man pronounces it is limited to certain regions of France (as well as poetry/singing), and is no longer the norm, as far as I am aware.
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Different languages consider the 'way' you drink soup differently. In French, any soup that is not just broth, then the French will use the verb "eating" Broth is a clear liquid. Soup usually contains things such as cut up vegetables, legumes and meat. As such it is more consistently normal for the French to use the relevant word for eating.
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As we are learning the language, the correct translation in this case is to use the direct translation for the verb the French use, " manger " , meaning "to eat" So that we, as learners, learn the French verb, and do not seek to confuse it with the concept "to drink" : "boire".
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For English speakers around the world, when it comes to soup, we have more variations with whether we consider we eat or drink soup. I do agree. And even in any one country, different sub communities may argue one way or the other. However this is not why we are here. We are here to learn French. So, in order to facilitate that, it has been deemed that the direct translation of the word that the French use, in reference to the consumption of soup will be used for the English translation.
That being the verb "to eat" : " manger ".
Now verbs in French, are different to the way we form verbs in English. Their form changes according to whom is doing the action.
For "to eat" :
- manger : to eat. |
1er |
wiktionary ;
leFigaro
Présent :
. je mange |
tu manges |
il mange |
elle mange
. nous mange
ons |
vous mangez |
ils mangent |
elles mangent
'avoir' + mangé
| Passé composé Recent-Current Past | ie. ai/as/a/avons/avez/ont
Click here to find out about why there is a spelling change for " nous mange
ons ".
Thus for :
- boi
re : to drink |
3me (boire/croire etc - irregular for plural.) |
wiktionary ;
leFigaro
Présent :
. je bois |
tu bois |
il boit |
elle boit |
on boit
. nous buv
ons | vous buv
ez | ils boiv
ent | elles boiv
ent
'avoir' + bu
| Passé composé Recent-Current Past | ie. ai/as/a/avons/avez/ont
3e verbe ~re pattern
More information about French verbs, specific to this Duolingo course:
French Verbs
Also if you click on the light gray links, most will take you to sound files.
If you hold down your "ctrl" or "shift" key before you click on the link, it will open this link in a different window, while keeping this window open here, so you do not lose your point in the exercise.
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I would say, that in certain settings, referring to children as kids can be a faux pas.
Yes I agree with you, that it is commonly known that in English we use the word kids to refer to both children and goats.
However someone that understands the English will be very aware of the word children. And also likely to understand nuances of when and when not to use the word kid. Yet here this course is designed for English speakers to learn French.
If it is that the word kid is not accepted, I support the decision of the team, and the language experts involved to choose to rule out the variation of the colloquialism of the use of the word "kid / kids".
Please note, I am not a member of this team, nor am a language expert in French in the field of teaching.
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Does this mean we can say "Les enfants mangent soupe" when we want to say "The children are eating soup"?
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It is, as my first French teacher would say to us, that the French pay attention to detail.
To learn French, you must use the articles before the noun.
These articles are the equivalent in English of "the" and "a" .
Yet in English, if we are not referring to a specific object, we will in circumstances such as this example of soup, leave off the article of "a".
However in French, they do not normally leave off an article description.
Nouns are generally used together with their articles in French. The article tells us the gender (masculine, feminine) and number (singular, plural).
There are indefinite articles (un, une, des) and definite articles (le, la, les).
You then also have elision in French, where the final unstressed vowel ( usually an e ) is suppressed, immediately before another word beginning with a vowel.
In writing this is represented by l'.
Such as l'eau : the water ; l'oiseau : the bird ; l'église : the church
And also that an un-aspirated h is treated as a vowel. ie. l'homme : the man
While an aspirated h is treated differently, and you get : le hero : the hero ; le hibou : the owl
please be aware, I am still learning French, and I appreciate it if you correct anything I may have misunderstood.
It's because Duo used to accept "kids" for "enfants". The people working on the incubator eventually decided that "kids" = "gamins" (informal), and "children" = "enfants" (formal).
Apparently when this decision was made, not all of the possible sentences using "kids", "children", "gamins" and "enfants" were changed to reflect the change.