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- "Those women are old."
"Those women are old."
Translation:Ces femmes sont âgées.
23 Comments
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
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.