"Fall is warm, dry and long."
Translation:L'automne est chaud, sec et long.
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"Fall" is about as English as it gets. Good, old English, carried to America. The British then, for some reason, took "autumn" from the French and the Americans didn't follow suit. "Autumn" now stands as the only one of the English words for a season that isn't Saxon ("fall" was). Maybe the Americans are more English than the English these days.
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What's that supposed to mean? Duolingo typically uses American English, although Briticisms like "the bin" for "la poubelle" show up once in a while.
Is the prefix of "la", "le" and "l'" always obligatory for seasons in French?
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Thank you so much! I also was wondering why sometimes the article is required and sometimes it is not. So the "en" is the rule.
"sèche" is for feminine nouns. (chaud - chaude, sec - sèche, long - longue)
Une saison (fem). Un été (masc). Un hiver (masc). Un automne (masc). Un printemps (masc).
if use l'automne..., should it be translated as "the fall..."? Thanks for whoever answers this.
It can be translated as either "the fall", "fall", "the autumn" or "autumn".
I think this sentence needs to be fixed: "A fall (into a tall volcano) is warm, dry and long" or "A fall (from a plane during a drought) is warm, dry and long". If you're not American the sentence as it currently is makes no sense! (Alternatively you could just change "fall" to "autumn".)
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Or, you could just recognize that "fall" is what "autumn" is called in some places, and translate appropriately. After all, when we North Americans got "The toy is in the bin," most of us had no idea that "bin" meant garbage/trash can.
I understand that it can be annoying to have to translate very North American English that may not be familiar to you, though I don't see why changing it to British English would make it any better!
Is "autumn" a strange word to you? Do you have to translate it to "fall" before the sentence makes sense? If "autumn" makes sense to 100% of English speakers why not use that as the default on Duolingo? Currently it makes sense to 55% and the remaining 45% is still a huge number of people! What I think would probably be ideal would be to split English into American English and Worldwide-except-America English. At least that way you wouldn't have to put up with everyone else's complaints about their preferred words!
By the way does "bin" have any meaning in En-US? We used to call it a (rubbish) bin but trash can is creeping in.
Both "Fall" and "Autumn" are registered as the defaults on this question, so you'd have to ask the developers at DL why "Fall" comes up all the time (if that's, in fact, the case).
Do you mean default or hint? I agree that they are both hints, as they should be to cater for everyone but only one of them can be the default.
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Sorry, I was a bit cranky when I wrote that comment.
No, "autumn" is not a strange word to me, and maybe it would be more universally understood.
"Bin" refers to a large (relatively speaking...it could be as small as 1 ft long or as big as 20 ft), rectangular container here. "Poubelle" was the only word given as a hint, however, and I kept forgetting that in at least some places in Britain a "bin" has the same meaning as what we Canadians call a "garbage."
No, the arrows are upvoting/downvoting to say you agree/disagree or think that a post is good/bad.
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'Fall' is the older Saxon word because the trend to use French for polite well-educated British people came after the pilgrims went to America....our word 'autumn' comes from the French which comes from the Latin. Anyway, I'm Australian but I think it's nice that the Americans use English that was frozen in time and less influenced by the French (not that there is anything wrong with that, of course). Personally, I think these words are American English at its best!
G'day mate! There's nothing wrong with American English and there's nothing wrong with Australian English either. "Fall" is a season in AmE. "Fall" is not a season in AusE. We use more French words than the Americans because Australian English branched off British English more recently. I don't know about you, but I understand "fall" the season as a purely American word. So far there's no hint of it being used as an Australian English word. I wonder if there's anything we say that seems wrong to Americans?
Hi CJ...yes, my point was that they are lovely words that the world should know...that's all. Use autumn or fall as your heart dictates but if truth be told we all know what both mean!
Actually, I don't know what "fall" means, except as a rapid descent or a verb. Every time I encounter it, I have to stop because it makes no sense to me, then I remember that to Americans it means "autumn". If someone says to me "I like the fall" I would think about a ride at an amusement park before the season!
Leaves falling off deciduous trees. Evergreens predominate in my neck of the woods.
It cannot be "longue" as it is a masculine noun. http://www.larousse.com/en/dictionnaires/francais/automne
Merci beaucoup, I get caught out by feminine and masculine nouns quite often
J'ai chaud = I am hot (subjectively, that's the feeling I have).
Je suis chaud = I am hot (to the touch).
This is a case of something (autumn) actually being hot, not having the subjective feeling of being hot (which, of course, doesn't make sense).
Longtemps is an adverb meaning "for a long time." That wouldn't make sense here.
apparently not. The English and French words for hot, warm, luke warm etc. don't overlap properly so you can never translate accurately. Normally you would say that is was 'doux' in autumn
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I'm confused as to the proper rule on this phrase. When you refer to temperature you should use faire, but sec and long should use etre....and the answer seems to accept both. What's the general rule?
« Faire » is for impersonal weather expressions (e.g. "It is warm"), not expressions with a clear noun.
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In that case, which ones of the following are correct and incorrect?
L'automne est sec, long et chaud.
L'automne fait sec, long et chaud.
L'automne fait chaud, sec et long.
L'automne est chaud, sec et long.
Surely there must be a better word for "warm" than «chaud»? En août il fait chaud, mais rarement en septembre et en octobre !
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Nope! French doesn't distinguish between hot and warm. You just have to use an adverb like "très" to be more specific.
Is there a reason why "L'automne est chaleureux, sec et long," would be an incorrect translation in this case?
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Two reasons:
(1), It would be weird, because nobody would say it like that in speech, and (2), it's only used in the figurative sense nowadays. So one could say "une bienvenue chaleureuse" ("a warm welcome") or "un débat chaleureux" ("a heated debate"), but not "une journée chaleureuse" ("a warm day"), which would instead be expressed as "une journée chaude."
So does chaud mean warm and hot? What if I clearly want to say warm (not hot); what is the French word for that?
The French don't distinguish between warm and hot. Sometimes context will tell you which one we'd use in English and sometimes not.
- Il fait chaud aujourd'hui - It is warm/hot today (maybe 25°-35°)
- Il fait très chaud aujourd'hui - It is very hot today (maybe hotter than 35°)
- Un chocolat chaud - A hot chocolate
Just remember that "warm" is a mild form of "hot".
chaud means both hot and warm
to distinguish between warm and hot you can say the following
hot : très chaud, brûlant (boiling hot - for liquids)
warm : chaud, à température ambiante (room temperature), tiède (warm, tepid, lukewarm)
I'm going to ignore that Americanism remark. And fyi, many of us call it 'Autumn' what miffs me is being marked Incorrect over ONE extra comma- which is often an Americanism, wrong or not.
Also, for the education of my fellow British students- A 'bin' is often considered a 'Stowage bin' wherein valuables are secured- not garbage. Thought you might like to know that.