"Nous mangeons la nourriture."
Translation:We eat the food.
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In French you use the partitive "de" when ordering food, eating food, taking food, etc. Je mange de la soupe. ( I eat soup) Le matin je bois du jus d'orange et je mange des tartines avec de la confiture. Generally you use de plus the definite article (de la , de'l, du, or des) when speaking of food, and it may be translated as "some" or simply left untranslated. You use the partitive because you're talking about an undetermined quantity of la soupe, le jus, les tartines, la confiture. Pour le dejeuner, je desire du poulet et Jean desire de la salade. Comme boisson Jean choisit de l'eau minerale, moi, du vin rouge. Nous maneons des fruits comme dessert. (Forgive the lack of accents, I don't know how to make them on my computer.) But with verbs of liking or disliking you use the definitive article when discussing food. "J'adore le chocolat; je deteste le nougat". And that's because you like or hate the whole entity called chocolat or nougat. So the French use le, la, les. In English we often don't distinguish the difference. I eat chicken because I love chicken. In French, je mange du poulet parce que j'adore le poulet.
And that's why the English "We are eating the food" bothers me. We're eating the food Aunt Mary brought over. We're eating the food leftover from Thanksgiving, ok! But just "we are eating the food" is not good English and that's why I translated the English into Nous mangeons de la nourriture. You're not eating all the food in the world, only an undetermined quantity of food. Nous mangeons la nourriture is not good French.
I agree. This app seems to arbitrarily penalize the translation either way of le / la. Especially when translating back to English. No one says "I like the food" when they just mean they like food in general.
"I like the food" is as awkward in English than in French (we could imagine these sentences only for very particuliar contexts), so I think they are right.
Oh.... Didn't know that. Thanks for a carefully explained explanation for my lack of French knowledge (Lol). I really stink at French and I've been taking to FOREVER!!!!!
I agree. Why isn't "Nous mangeons la nourriture" able to be translated as "We are eating food?" It doesn't sound proper to say "We are eating the food" generally.
Where is the food I made ? We are eating it. (We ate eating the food. ) isn't that how we say it in english when referring to something in particular?
Because it's "la", it's definite. "Nous mangeons la nourriture" is very weird in French, but it means what it means, it's a definite food. It has to be also "a" definite "food" in English.
The common sentence is "Nous mangeons de la nourriture" (even if the redundancy is very weird and awkward in French) = We eat (some) food. Here, it's not definite food.
I think it would be better to say "nous mangeons de la nourriture." Also, we eat the food sounds awkward in English. We eat food. We drink wine. I don't think the definite article should be translated.
"Nous mangeons de la nourriture" does not make sense. De means of/from. It would be "Nous mangeons du nourriture"
Actually "nous mangeons de la nourriture" is correct. Because "du" here is actually the sum of "de" and "le". And since there's no word for "de" + "la" and since the word "nourriture" is feminine, using "de la" would be the way to say "we're eating (some) food" or "we eat some food".
BTW, If you're translating from french, you could chose not to use the word "some" because it's understood
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Thanks for making it clear, Awwami! Even if it's left couple of months, it could be very helpful for those who newly join here to practice and learn Langs.
Thanks, but I know that now :P IT's been a couple months since I asked that... But thanks anyways :)
"Nous mangeons de la nourriture" makes a perfect sense, but it's not the sentence here, it's "LA" nourriture, not "DE LA". The meaning is different.
"Nous mangeons du nourriture" is wrong and doesn't exist in French. Nourriture is feminine, it's "de la" as the partitive.
In english we can say that when referring to a food in particular. The food on the table
Nourishment is is given as an alternative translation to nourriture but not accepted as an answer
I would sooner associate nourishment with "alimentation". I don't think I have ever heard anyone say in English "We eat nourishment". One eats food for nourishment. I don't know if that helps you?
nourriture looks similiar with the nourishment, but nourriture means food mainly, while the nourishment emphasizes on something nourishing to eat.
Yes. To feed = "nourrir." Nourishment = "alimentation". "Nourishment" comes from the old French "nourrissement" but this word doesn't exist anymore in modern French. (indeed it still exist, but is very uncommon)
Sorry for the late reply. The difference would be the same between "We eat the food" and "We eat food"
I think "We eat food" = "Nous mangeons de la nourriture".
"We eat the food" = "Nous mangeonos la nourriture" (definite food, known)
we eat food makes more sense than we eat the food.Could this imprecision be tolerated?
They both make sense in the right context. As niting pointed out, "we eat food" is "nous mangeons de la nourriture."
"We eat food" and "We eat some food" have the same translations in French (and the only translation) = Nous mangeons de la nourriture.
In French "nous mangeons" may be translated as "we are eating, we eat or we do eat."
I translated it with "We eat food" and it was not correct according to Duo since it should have been "the food" for the. In English, however, the food alone is wrong. We eat the food that is on the table is correct, but we eat the food is not.
Let's imagine "on the table" is implied, because the sentence is weird in French too. It's probably because we don't have the previous sentence, or the next ones.
Note that, normally, in proper French, we would say "Nous mangeons" (without "la nourriture), because it sounds too redundant in French.
When translating to English, you don't really need the definite article if the sentence says something like 'Nous mangeons la nourriture', because it can mean 'We are eating the soup' OR 'We eat soup'.