- Forum >
- Topic: French >
- "Those women are old."
"Those women are old."
Translation:Ces femmes sont âgées.
23 Comments
Why is the suggested translation of old ainée, but this is not an accepted response? And why is agées not a suggestedtranslation, when this is the expected answer?
The feminine form of "vieux" is "vieille" in singular and "vieilles" in plural.
445
That and Those/This and These. Why is "Those women" not Ces femmes-la (with grave accent on "a")
- 2167
My understanding is that the -là and -ci suffixes are optional and only used when really necessary to avoid confusion
In this case, "Those" is given specifically in the english sentence. So I strongly think, that 'Those' should be translated to 'Ces femmes-là' as against just 'Ces femmes'.
- 2001
I, too, am a learner, not an expert, but paraphrasing what I've found in researching this a bit:
'Ces' can mean either 'these' or 'those' and your listener can usually tell from context which is meant, but if you want to stress one or the other you can use the suffixes '-ci' (here) or '-là' (there).
More at this link:
http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/adjectives_demonstrative.htm
So, it does not appear that you must use the suffixes. As hivemindx suggests, it is obviously not wrong to use the suffix, but it is not a necessity.
- 2167
In English we have to use either "these" or "those", we don't have an ambiguous middle ground to use. I'm not a native French speaker but it seems to me that the default in French is to leave out the suffix most of the time. Following your reasoning we would use one or the other every single time because we would always be translating either "these" or "those". It's not wrong, I just think it might be a language tic that would mark you out as a learner in conversation.
"ces femmes-là" is accepted, provided the rest of the sentence is correct.
anciennes is used for antiques or civilizations (une montre ancienne / l'ancienne Egypte)
une vielle is a musical instrument (ancestor of a guitar).
the adjective translating old is: vieux (masc singular and plural), vieil (masc in front of a word starting a vowel), vieille (fem sing), vieilles (fem plural).
Les femmes being feminine plural, you have to use "vieilles".
Grammatically speaking, "vieux" is masculine (same form in singular or plural) and "âgées" is feminine plural.
In terms of usage, when you refer to people, "âgé, âgée, âgés, âgées" is considered more respectful than "vieux, vieille, vieux, vieilles".
I put "ces femmes sont âgées", which is exactly what is listed by Duolingo as the answer, but it was marked wrong....
