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- "Elle n'a aucun frère."
71 Comments
456
"She has no brother" is a bit antique. "She has no brothers" is more common and was accepted.
2437
Maybe from this English - French difference in how zero is treated, we can say that neither language uses both "singular" vs. "plural" as grammatical categories. Instead: 1. English has "singular" and "non-singular" [+/- singular]: since "zero" and "plural" are both "non-singular," they receive the same treatment. 2. French has "plural" and "non-plural" [+/- plural]: since both "singular" and "zero" are "non-plural," they receive the same treatment. >> It comes down to choosing which number concept is primary, and making a binary opposition on one of these.
2306
Besides the incorrect inclusion of "pas" ("ne...aucun" is all you need), pay attention to the accents. Note: père, mère, frère all use the accent grave.
2306
Aucun (as a positive) is simply "any" or, in the negative form (ne...aucun), "none" (or "not any"). http://www.larousse.com/en/dictionaries/french-english/aucun/645590
2306
In English, it would be "she does not have any brothers". Elle n'a pas de frère = She does not have a brother (or) She has no brother.
2306
That answer is listed among the accepted answers. I don't know why it was marked wrong for you. Are you using an app?
2306
It is correct but Duo often will mark English sentences containing contractions wrong. I believe it stems from the fact that French has many contractions which are mandatory, while contractions in English are never mandatory but simply convey a more informal register. To avoid unnecessary loss of hearts, I generally avoid contractions in English sentences here.
You can indeed have only one brother! You can also have none or you can have many.
If you're disowning your only brother, you can use the singular (in English). Otherwise you'd use the plural. In French, if I remember correctly, "aucun(e)" always takes the singular, but "pas de" can use either singular or plural.
456
The singular is correct in French. In English we usually use the plural, although as Anton-KM notes above, sometimes we do use the singular. These things don't always translate precisely from one language to another.
2306
The sentences are not constructed so as to facilitate simple translations. It is to learn how French expresses an idea and how that same idea is expressed in English.
2306
There is no "one brother" in the French. The translation of "elle n'a aucun frère" is "she does not have any brothers". "Elle n'a pas de frère" = she does not have a brother (or) she has no brother.
Would be nice to understand why it is pronounced like that. Either I have heard this sentence so often before or it is standard way of prounouncing and it appears in other exercises "Elle n'a..." and presumably "Il n'a..." do not so far as I am aware include a "k" sound. So why does it appear? It makes interpreting/translating the sentence guess work.
244
Elle n'a aucun freres. - with accents, wan not accepted. Surely, - She does not have any brothers - is much the same thing.
540
Can anyone explain why in this case it is clearly allowed to have two consecutive vowels? I thought that was a no-go in French?
It's not a rule per se. There are about 16 words (mostly ending with a non-silent « e »: « me », « que », etc.) that always get elided before another vowel, and there are certain inversions that get a euphonic « -t- » (« a-t-il », « a-t-elle », etc.), but otherwise, two vowels can indeed be said sequentially.
2306
The issue is how you say it in English. She has no brother (or) She doesn't have any brothers.
2306
French negatives in standard language are used in pairs:
- ne ... pas
- ne ... rien
- ne ... personne
- ne ... aucun
- ne ... jamais
So you would not use both "pas" and "aucun" together.
868
As the French is using singular ( frere… and not freres) the English translation should not be marked wrong when one uses singular too.
868
By the way it is quite different in English to say... she has no brothers... or to say she does not have any brother