"Les hommes boivent du lait."
Translation:The men drink milk.
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While translating "Men drink milk." to french, "Des hommes boivent du lait." was marked incorrect for me. Could anyone please explain what am I missing?
The correct sentence would be "Les hommes boivent du lait."
Des is used when the object is plural in French terms. Ex: "Je mange des épinards.", meaning I eat some spinach.
Des is also used when an object is countable, but in an indefinite sense. Ex: "J'ai des clients intelligente.", meaning I have some smart clients.
Read this: http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/de-vs-du-de-la-des.htm
(You may want to bookmark it as well.)
You would be coorect if it sais "Hommes boivent du lait" Becasue of the 'Les' you were wrong. You were suppose to say "the men drink some milk"
Can I ask you another question here. How would you say "Babies drink milk" meaning general idea, not that they are drinking "some" milk. Les enfants boivent le lait?
Thank you very much in advance
Mmmm... Last question was "Men drinking milk", I answered that at this time and was wrong... Why?! :'(
This is because 'Les hommes boivent du lait' translates to 'The men drink milk' you didn't add 'The' at the end. Hope this helps
'Du' fits perfectly, because when you mention milk, you put 'du' in front of it (unless you put 'le' in front of 'lait'). Example: "J'ai du lait" which means "I have milk" and "J'ai le lait" which means "I have the milk" Hoe this helps
The men drink milk and men drink milk (the other translation supplied) is ambiguous. "The men" would indicate something like "those men over there", versus men drink milk, as in all men do so (which is illogical, too). Is there not better way to define this in french grammar?
"Les hommes boivent du lait." can either mean that these men we know about are drinking milk, or that all men (as a general rule) drink milk. Only context can help us differentiate the two.
when i put 'some' for 'du' it said it was right but the other times when i dont use it when it inst necessary, it doesn't work. why not?
"Men drink milk" was marked incorrectly; the implication is men, in general, drink milk..an earlier example using "Les femmes.." was accepted as "Women drink.."
Basically, you can think of <<du>> meaning "some" (however, don't think of this as a literal translation because in the sentence <<Je bois DU cafe>>, for example, you don't have to translate it to "I drink some coffee", you can just say "I drink coffee"). Le/la/l' literally translate to "the". So think if you were saying the sentence "I drink coffee" but you were talking about coffee in general, not specific coffee, then you would say <<Je bois du cafe>>, meaning "I drink coffee", as opposed to if you were saying "I drink THE coffee", which would be <<Je bois LE cafe>>.
Here is the conjugation of the verb "boire":
http://la-conjugaison.nouvelobs.com/du/verbe/boire.php
"du" is an indefinite article used for uncountable nouns, such as "temps" (time), "lait" (milk), "pain" (bread), etc, etc...
"du" can also be a mandatory contraction of "de + le" as in "Jai besoin du vélo de mon voisin." ("I need my neighbour's bike."). But that's not the case in this exercise.
To learn more about French articles, you can start here:
http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/articles.htm
You should consider reading the 5 pages.