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- Topic: French >
- "La douleur est légère."
35 Comments
I love the fact that I'm learning French and at the same time I'm improving my English by using Duo. I'm Italian, and these grammatical discussions help me a lot.
1949
Same here, native spanish speaker, it is like learning two languages at the same time.
- 510
I take my hat off to you both. "Learning two languages at the same time," sounds quite daunting to me. Bravo to you.
You need more hats then. Russian here. I do like your comments,thanks!))) This one forced me to dig out "daunting"...-:))
Hi guys, I am czech and learning french from english and german from english. Time will come when Duo will offer these also from czech. Big thanks to all Dou helpers for your work!
Me as well i learn two languages in the same time i'm a native arabic speaker i really like that
- 510
Not sure what people think is incorrect about the English sentence. It makes perfect sense to me. "I heard you were stung by a bee, is it painful?" "The pain is mild, but the itching is driving me crazy."
- 288
An article in French does not always translate to an article in English. "La douleur" is usually translated as "Pain" and not "The pain".
That works for a generalization, but pain is not necessarily usually mild. So it makes more sense in English with the definite article.
Yes.. and that is why duolingo takes both, but here it only makes sense in English to say "the pain is mild" because "pain is mild" is not grammatically correct. THE pain is mild.. because you cannot speak for pain in general in english.
I'd say on the contrary it is grammatically correct, it's just not logically correct.
Remember "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"? It's an example of a grammatically correct sentence....that has no discernible meaning!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously
So you are both right. To say, "pain is mild" is nonsense....but it is grammatically correct. So what we would like to see on DL is more sentences that are both sensible AND grammatically correct. Can I get a second to that motion?
I absolutely agree that the above sentence by itself is quite illogical in the general sense. With more context, however, it could be taken as a general opinion; for example: Pain is mild compared to the severity of death.
Why is hat masculine? We just have to memorize the article with the noun to learn which gender it is. Sometimes a noun ending will give you a clue. https://www.thoughtco.com/introduction-french-nouns-1368884
https://www.thoughtco.com/french-gender-masculine-endings-1368853
If you don't remember or come across a new word, you can always look it up in a dictionary where they will usually put f for feminine or m for masculine, the n in this dictionary stands for noun. https://dictionary.reverso.net/french-english/douleur
Can "legere" (with accents, of course) be used to mean light (as in weight) as well?
Yes. https://dictionary.reverso.net/french-english/l%C3%A9ger When looking a word up in the dictionary though, look under the masculine form: "léger" which usually includes the feminine form "légère". Especially in this case in which the word for weight is masculine: https://dictionary.reverso.net/english-french/weight
Although the adjective will change forms depending on the gender of the noun that it is describing. "une chaise légère" , "un livre léger"
Yes, it is unlikely. You would want to put the definition that is the best fit for the sentence.
- 510
You said morning? For what? Douleur? No, it is not even remotely correct. I suggest a good online dictionary. I like http://www.wordreference.com/
