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A slightly more long winded translation, "Your shoes, are they white?" would seem to make this more clear (in fact you might even say it like that "Your shoes..." (get person's attention) pause, "...are they white).
"Vos chaussures sont-elles blanches ?"
What's the elles doing here? I don't understand what purpose it serves or why it's part of the sentence. Can anybody explain?
when we use the interrogative sentence without interrogative, and also the subject is not a personal pronoun but just a noun, in this case, we use complex inversion. but you can use "vos chaussures sont blanches?" too. i think the sentence using inversion is more polite...
In case you forgot, Elle can also mean it. So sont-elles would translate to are they
well is also correct to say: sont blanches vos chaussures? and it sound better as i see it.... i am a spanish talker so by my point of view elles is like "those" (in french femenine) so i would something like: your shoes, are they white?? but if you don't put the elles i would be: your shoes are white?? what is the same thing
why would the question not start off with "Tes" ?
" Tes chaussures sont-elles blanches?" I put that and got it incorrect.
Tes means 'your' as well , is Vos more formal?
Also, vos can mean you in the plural form, like you guys, or as they say in Texas, y'all
Although I got this answer correct (only because I failed it the first time) I still do not understand this. I am trying my best to not to think with my American English mind but this one is very difficult for me.
i dont have the explanation for this, but notice that this is the formal french version. as opposed to using the informal ta chaussures, the formal kind tends to be somewhat more complex
Is 'elles' here is for the gender of shoes? So can it be applied to, let's say "Vos chapeaux sont-ils blanches"?
Basically except since chapeau is masculine you would say "blancs" rather than "blanches".
