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- Topic: French >
- "Il coupe une orange."
53 Comments
I didn't know what coupe meant so I moved my mouse over it and it said "Haircut." You can guess what happened next.
Still better than cutting the cheese (anyone who's done the Portuguese course knows what I'm talking about).
You never leave off the final "e" in the French indefinite articles (un, une), as you do with the definite articles (le, la, l'). Although, come to think of it, I can't imagine why not... unless it's because when you leave off the final "e" it looks like the masculine article.
It has to do with the sound made at the end of the word. 'Une' still has a consonant sound at the end so it's not difficult to say une orange, like it's hard to say la orange without taking off the a of la.
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A more specific answer is that the "e" in le is pronounced as an actual vowel, and thus it merges with the nearest vowel sound in the noun (e.g., l'homme), but the "e" in une is only there to denasalize the "n", creating a consonant sound where there is none in un. That "e" isn't really a vowel, so it must remain part of the article and can't merge with other vowel sounds.
When you tap on the icon to hear the sentence spoken it sounds like she is saying "l'orange" not "une orange"
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No, although it's easy to draw a connection between the two! Couper is derived from a Latin word meaning "to behead", while coup eventually traces back to Ancient Greek kólaphos, meaning "a slap to the face".
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Not directly, but the two words are probably cognate. From Wiktionary: couper comes from Old French coper, colper (“to cut off”), probably, derived from cop (“blow”), colp (modern coup), with its meaning coming from the idea of cutting off with a blow. But the Modern French coup (blow, strike) does not come from Modern French couper (to cut), no.
Just have to say kudos to lissybeth91 and sean.mullin for their super explanations!
My translation "He is slicing an orange" was marked as wrong, although when I checked here http://www.wordreference.com/fren/couper, there is indeed a translation of 'couper' to 'to slice'. I am not a native English speaker, but I have never heard the expression "cutting a fruit". Am I wrong?
It's perhaps more common to hear slicing a fruit, but cutting a fruit is perfectly correct as well, as far as the English at least.
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in the case of orange is not so common to say slice. One good example is: I slice the onion. I slice the ham, (couper en rondelles/tranches)
Coupe... from your username I would guess you're a dancer as well, so you're probably familiar with the word in a ballet context... If not, coupe is a connecting movement in classical ballet where you sort of "cut" one foot across the other foot, replacing it.
Me? Dancer? O_o If I tried even remotely, that would seem like a mild form of terrorism.
HAHAHAHA oh okay, well then... yeah, both coupe and tendu are ballet movements.
Why is it wrong when I say he cuts an orange? It says the translation is cuts up. Where is the up?
I would guess nothing is wrong, and without context either could be right. I am assuming here that in French the verbs to cut up and to cut both translate to couper.
Would be interested to have native french speaker expand the translation of to cup up, maybe couper en morceaux, and faire une seule coupe for to cut?
No. Seriously! You can mumble literally anything, and Duo's VR will accept it as correct. It's fun; give it a try.
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Conjugating: Sometimes the je and tu conjugations are the same, others the je and il are the same, is there any rule?
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With -er verbs, such as parler, the first person singular and third person singular are the same; with the -ir verbs, such as finer or agir, the first person singular and second person singular are the same.
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Unfortunately, you just have to memorize the gender with every new noun you learn until the associations are second nature. Some people give a simple rule of "nouns ending in '-e' are often feminine", but there are so many exceptions to the rule that it's not worth thinking about.
I think that "ils coupent une orange" would sound identical to "il coupe une orange". No?
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Why does one have to keep complaining about the poor quality of the sound so frequently, and nothing improves?
My options only had "cut", not "cutting" so it was marked incorrect when I formed the sentence "He cut an orange" as opposed to the other option which would have been, "He is cut an orange."
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Did it have "cuts"? The sentence can either be translated as "He cuts an orange" or "He is cutting an orange".
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Doesn't "ils coupent" and "il coupe" sound the same? How can we know the difference when asked to listen and translate?
