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- "Est-elle japonaise ?"
36 Comments
This mistake is getting annoying. I've flagged it so many times and they still haven't fixed it. It's very egregious, and I feel sorry for people who are beginners in French to have to hear this over and over again. They are learning the wrong thing! It's cringe-worthy and makes me worry about what I am learning with Spanish, which I AM a beginner in.
2302
In spoken French, you may do that with a voice inflection at the end. In writing, it's better to use a different structure.
453
In this case, the literal translation is also the most straightforward. I suppose DL should also allow an inversion such as you propose, but I don't really see the point.
You could say "Est-ce qu'elle est japonaise?" You can always form a question by adding "Est-ce que" to the beginning of a statement. But not "Est-ce qui" as far as I'm aware. I have never heard of that, except as part of the construction "Qui est-ce qui" (ie "Qui est-ce qui parle japonais? Who is speaking Japanese?")
Allemand (capital A) is a noun (hence the article); japonaise (small j) is an adjective.
In English, we only have separate noun versions of a few nationalities: Englishman, Frenchman, Pole. As to whether "a German" should be accepted as a noun form, I can't say. We wouldn't say "He is a French." I would prefer "a German man" because it acknowledges that Allemand is the masculine form, whereas "a German" could be either masculine or feminine.
248
The woman says «Est-ce qu'elle japanese?»
Which seems to be a wrong way of saying «Est-ce qu'elle est japanese?»
2302
They say it's a sign that we're making progress when we type words from one language while thinking about the other. EN "Japanese" = FR "japonais/japonaise". But I think you know that already.