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- "Ces maisons sont celles de m…
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You'd normally just say ' These houses are my uncle's ' , with ' ones ' being omitted as obvious from the context.
In English, it isn't correct to say "these ones" even if it is split up in the sentence. It is repetitive.
I think a better English translation would be "these houses are the ones belonging to my uncle." You just can't do a word for word translation from French to English or vice-versa.
Or "These houses are those of my uncle,", which is word for word and correct. There are many houses in a particular street, and these two are the ones that my uncle owns.
"These houses are those of my uncle" whilst perfectly grammatical, is unlikely to be encountered outside of a 19th century novel, methinks. I can't imagine myself saying it.
Or, these houses are the ones that belong to my uncle - but I don't know if it accepts that translation.
There are several ways of saying this in English "These houses are my uncle's" "These are my uncle's houses" "These houses are the ones belonging to my uncle." "These are the houses belonging to my uncle." The focus of the sentence can be varied in spoken English by altering the stress of certain words, something which cannot be represented in writen English. e.g. "These are my uncle's houses" vs "THESE are my uncle's houses" - The latter implies a prior reference to the said houses.
Strange, but I hear "felles" rather than "celles". Of course the context should lead me to celles. It just doesn't sound like the reader is pronouncing the word correctly.
So, I gather from reading the previous posts, that one can omit the "celles" in French and still be correct, yes??
