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- "He has a bear."
"He has a bear."
Translation:Il a un ours.
32 Comments
Ou il peut avoir un ours véritable : http://www.catalyzingchange.org/800-lb-grizzly-bear-mans-best-man-wedding/
When do you use 'y' in a sentence? Like, 'Il y a un ours' because I swear doulingo taught me that :S
"Y" has different usages that you will come across later.
For now, note that "il y a" is a phrase meaning "there is" or "there are", and "y" means "there"
So "il y a un ours" literally translates to "he there has a bear"? And if so, why use the "il"?
Remember: "il" can translate to "he" or "it" and it can be a real subject representing someone or something masculine, or it can be impersonal.
- "il y a" is fixed and means "there is" or "there are". This "il" is impersonal
- "il pleut" = it is raining. Both "il" and "it" are impersonal
- "il faut" = it is necessary. Both "il" and "it" are impersonal
Wait a moment... I used ours in a plural sentence, as in the bears. How can this be singular then?
I don't recall learning the word baissier. Just another word for bear? What are the connotations?
"baissier/baissière" is an adjective which means "bearish" and as you can guess, it is only used by stock exchange pros or punters.
...And that is the correct word to use in the translation for "he has a bear"? Using baissier wouldn't make the sentence awkward and translate to "he has a bearish"? I would have thought ours would have been the best word for this translation.
You are learning basic vocabulary in this course, especially in early lessons. This lesson is about animals, not financial jargon. "un ours" is a bear, there is no trick here.
Again "baissier/bearish" is an adjective you could find in such a sentence in a financial context:
"The weekly chart shows a strong bearish trend " = Le graphique hebdomadaire montre une forte tendance baissière.
Maybe you have misunderstood why I asked about the word baissier in the first place. I was given the translation problem "he has a bear". I failed to correctly translate it the first time so Duolingo told me the correct answer was "il a un baissier". I had never seen this word before. It sounds like it can be both a noun and an adjective, and in this case would have been used as a noun.
And it is interesting to hear about its use as an adjective in financial contexts, but I was only curious about how I was supposed to know this word and why it was suggested instead of ours which I thought would fit better.
Duolingo can be unpredictable sometimes. By no means has "baissier" (again, an adjective only, derived from "une baisse" = a decrease/decline/reduction) ever been listed as a correct translation for "un ours" by the team in charge of the course content.
However, I saw that it was on the hint list and I have to assume that a silly algorithm was at work and proposed any word from the list as a possible synonym for "ours". Therefore, I removed "baissier" from the hints, so that it does not happen again. Thanks for your report.
I got a screenshot with two right answers, both marked as my answer right answer, but i go it wrong...
Why does this have a 1(one)? "He has a bear." Would only accept this as the answer "Il a 1 ours."
