"You are drinking my wine."
Translation:Vous buvez mon vin.
22 Comments
Yes, "mon" is enough to specify the object. In English, it is the same for you would not say "you are drinking some my wine".
1832
Well, technically in English we could say "you are drinking some of my wine"...but thanks for the explanation, makes sense to me now.
Yes this seems inconsistent with the act of drinking requiring "du" before...
In all other instances, so far, all food and drink require des or du prior to the word. Why is it not necessary in this case?
- 1832
The above comments explain that. And des or du are not used every time for food, there are also cases where we use the definite article (le/la/les).
The use of a possessive adjective is an alternative to the use of an article. In this case, it is not about any wine or the wine on the table or some wine: it is MY wine.
Why is the use of 'tu' wrong here? Vous would be the formal version of 'tu' if I´m correct? But how am I supposed to see that if only 'you' is written there?
- 1832
As far as I know, Duolingo always accepts both "tu" and "vous" when "you" is given in English. If you were marked wrong there must have been some other error in your answer.
Being in an informal kind of mood I wrote: 'Tu buvez mon vin' but was marked as incorrect. Please can somebody tell me why this is wrong?
"buvez" is wrong, because it is the verb conjugation for "vous buvez" (polite singular or plural) not "tu bois"
French nouns need a "determiner", ie a small word that can be an article (un, une des, le, la les, + contracted articles) or a demonstrative adjective (ce, cet, cette, ces) possessive adjective (mon, ton, son,etc).
My wine = mon vin, determiner "mon" is a possessive adjective (masc. sing)
Why is "Tu es bois mon vin" incorrect? I know it may sound a little bit formal, as it is a direct translation, but I don't see anything grammatically incorrect with it.
In English, to mean that an action is in progress at the time you speak, you use the continuous verbal form, ie verb BE + action verb in the gerund form (-ing). o you are drinking means you currently drink
In French, this verbal form does not exist (directly translated “tu es buvant” is incorrect). Therefore, you can translate either “tu bois” or “tu es en train de boire”, where the construction verb être + en train de + infinitive correctly expresses the English continuous form.
- 1832
That literally means "You are drink my wine", which is grammatically incorrect in English, as it is in French.
French does have a gerund form (equivalent to English "-ing" endings), but that hasn't been taught at this point in Duolingo, and I believe it would be the wrong expression for this sentence.
