"Il coupe une orange."
Translation:He is cutting an orange.
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314
Still better than cutting the cheese (anyone who's done the Portuguese course knows what I'm talking about).
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.
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.
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?
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?
334
Conjugating: Sometimes the je and tu conjugations are the same, others the je and il are the same, is there any rule?
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.
1090
Doesn't "ils coupent" and "il coupe" sound the same? How can we know the difference when asked to listen and translate?