"Is that a chicken?"
Translation:Est-ce un poulet ?
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I'd forgotten about this one. Well, you can use "il" to mean "it", but I think I got mixed up with pronouns used as a presentative device and pronouns used with a complement eg:
"Voulez-vous du poulet? Il est trés bon"
That sentence seems fine to me. But I guess you would write "c'est un poulet". I always did have trouble with when you use c'est and when you use il/ils/elle/elles est. If anyone has a good guide, it'd be appreciated"
Here is a resource on the use of c'est vs il est http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa032500.htm
Ah thanks for that. I'll look at it properly tomorrow morning when I'm not tired from work, but from my quick glance now, I still can't quite work out when you use c'est and when you use il est. Or even why my answer above was wrong! I thought perhaps c'est is used exclusively as a presentative device with unmodified nouns (c'est un poulet, c'est une voiture, or whatever), and that's why I was wrong, but I can't see that listed as among the uses of c'est at that page.
I've done some more research and what I get is, if you want to say "is it a chicken", that would be "est-ce un poulet" but to say "is that a chicken" is "est-ce que un poulet". the English that was given was the latter. My memory is of the teacher going around the room pointing to objects, "est-ce que une pomme?, Mais non, c'est une orange...ou, Oui, c'est une pomme. Likewise, Qu'est que c'est? C'est une pomme. N'est pas?
Can a native French speaker explain why it isn't "est-ce que un poulet"? The question was "Is that chicken?" not "Is it chicken?"