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- "I drink her water."
"I drink her water."
Translation:Yo bebo el agua de ella.
41 Comments
In the sentence, "Yo bebo el agua de ella."; 'Yo' is the subject, 'agua' is the direct object, and 'de ella' is a prepositional possessive phrase.
"La" cannot be used as a possessive pronoun. "Yo bebo el agua de la" is incorrect and would translate as " I drink the water from/of she."
You can either say "Yo bebo el agua de ella.", which is "I drink the water of her's.", or you could say "Yo bebo el agua su.", which is a little more ambiguous and could mean; "I drink your (formal) water.", or "I drink his/her/it's water."
In this case, "Yo bebo el agua de ella.", is the best because it specifies that it is HER water and not his/it's/your water.
Useful Links:
Pronouns: http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/courses/PRONOUN1.HTM Use of "De": http://spanish.about.com/od/prepositions/a/preposition_de.htm Posessive adjectives: http://www.studyspanish.com/lessons/adj2.htm
I don't know why Duolingo would have translated it like this, given that you probably haven't learned this yet, but here it goes:
The "me" in "Yo me bebo su agua." is working as a REFLEXIVE PRONOUN. This translates to "I, myself, am drinking her water." The "me/myself" is unnecessary unless you really want to stress that you, yourself, are the one drinking her water.
Useful Link: http://spanish.about.com/od/pronouns/a/reflexive_pron.htm
Why is "yo" necessary? I translated Bebo el agua de ella, and that cost me my last heart so now I have to start this over! I am getting very disgusted with DUOLINGO-some things that I KNOW are correct they tell me are wrong. They simply will not allow any synonyms, (and there are many in Spanish). The really frustrating part is that you cannot continue till you do this right according to their answers.
"Agua" is actually a feminine word, however, when a feminine word begins with 'a', the masculine article, "el", is often used to prevent slurring. Otherwise, "La agua" might sound like "Lagua". You also usually see "un agua" instead of "una agua".
Because 'agua' is actually feminine, you use 'de'. If agua was, indeed, masculine, you would have "del agua".
I hope this helps.
P.S. I think it would be incorrect, but common, for you to see or hear del agua sometimes. It's wrong but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a common mistake since we use the masculine article so often.