"Do you drink tea?"
Translation:Tu bois du thé ?
13 Comments
I am having difficulty deciding when to use "du the" or "le the" also having the same problem sucre
If it's just "tea" in a sentence then it's 'du thé'. If it's a plural word then it's 'des..'. It's only ever 'le' for "the tea" or 'les' for another plural word. At least that's my understanding. So, unless it's explicitly saying "THE tea", then just go with du thé.
I don't understand why it's "du thé" for "do you drink tea", but it's "les fruits" for "I don't like fruits". Shouldn't those sentences follow the same rules? Im very confused.
The root sentence is NOT "I drink some tea" thus, "vous buvez le the" is right.
no it is not right, "le the" determines which tea, it stands for "THE tea". While "du the" is undetermined, can be either "some tea" or just "tea". "du" is an undetermined article
When do you use or not an article? Do you have to learn by trial and error. I really bored. It's just a guessing game, no rules on grammar usage.
French almost always uses an article, so just assume that you need one. Then you have to figure out if you need a definite ("the tea"), indefinite ("a tea," "tea," or "some tea"), or partitive ("of the tea") article. This topic is covered pretty well at About.com. I never knew what a good language resource about.com was until I started duolingo! Anyway, here's the link. Best wishes in your language studies! http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/articles.htm
I've never seen Bois-tu before now, had no idea. Tried faire based on the table and was incorrect. Harsh!
Bois-tu or Buvez vous it's fine as well. You can't use "faire" here cause "do" works as an auxiliar and not as a verb.
