"That car is my father's."

Translation: Cette voiture est celle de mon père.

[angelriv17]

what's wrong with "cette voiture est de mon père"?

[cematthews.cem]

I had the same question.

[cornflaked]

Why is 'Cette voiture est à mon père' wrong?

[jrikhal]

"That car belongs to my father" -> "Cette voiture est à mon père"/"Cette voiture appartient à mon père"
but :
"That car is my father's" -> "Cette voiture est celle de mon père"

[Curcolio]

cornflaked is correct : his sentence would be correct in french. The pronoun "celle de mon père" would be used only in very specific sentences.

Cornflaked : because the engine that notes you has not registered the phrase.

[jrikhal]

As a native french speaker I don't think that "celle de mon père" would be used only in very specific sentences.

But obviously cornflaked's answer could be accepted I was only giving more accurate translation (according to me) between the two way of saying this.

[AnnaTall]

it obviously has already :)

[AnnaTall]

it's given by Duolingo (sep 2013) as one of correct translations...

[srh1056]

I was told that "cette voiture est à mon père" was the correct answer.

[Anneguus]

Is 'celui' only used to refer to masculin things?

[rpl12345]

Yes

[Bee_338]

"C'est la voiture de mon père." Pas accepté, mais pourquoi?

[growan]

is there a reason why I can't say "cette voiture-là ..." to specify that it is THAT car not THIS car?

[jrikhal]

Both (without and with "-là") are correct.

[xuyang1233321]

Why is "cette voiture est celle qui est a mon pere" wrong?????

[jrikhal]

What Duolingo indicates as wrong ?
Grammatically I see one error : "cette voiture est celle qui est À mon père"; accent on the "à" (and accent in "père" by the way). Because here "à" is the preposition and not the verb "avoir".
But more than the grammar, this turn of phrase sounds to complicated/not natural to me and also far from the english "That car is my father's."

[truddles]

we cannot put the accents over the letters with english keyboards.

[jrikhal]

Yeah, that's why Duolingo gives some button to press to put them. And that's why I'm asking what Duo put in red as wrong, to be able to help because, if it's not an accent problem (as I believe, since Duo is flexible on this), I don't see a grammatical problem.

But the better is to add an english with accents keyboard layout and switch to this one when working french/spanish or switch definitively to this one.

[MariaM70]

Are you sure? In Swedish keyboards you just press a letter a little longer and then a varaiety of letters with accents shows.

[rpl12345]

In that case why does DL insist it must be done either with the relative pronoun or sometimes not? One cannot know whether extra emphasis is needed or not by the sentence.

[mlindal]

Which would be the more common French:
Cette voiture est celle de mon père.
C'est la voiture de mon père
?

[rpl12345]

The second. So why does DL insist on the first?

[rosetyler0209]

Couldn't I use "automobile" instead of "voiture"? As far as I know they are basically the same word