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- "Mon oncle est l'auteur du li…
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"du" is a contraction of "de-le", therefore the use of definite article "the" is logical.
"My uncle is the author of a book" is "mon oncle est l'auteur d'un livre"
Yes, I finally got it right. Merci, cher Monsieur Sitesurf! Really you're the best. The French site is much loved- don't burn out!
Wondering the same thing. Marking it as "should be correct", we'll see what Duolingo does with it.
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He is the author of the specific book but he may not be a writer, i.e. earning by writing
Some of the phrases are so odd that they seem really unlikely. Going to try to see them as 'island' phrases, not with any context!
This is meant to teach you the construction of possessive cases in French. So that you are not tempted to mirror the English structure, like "mon oncle est le livre auteur"
Why don't you need "la" in front of livre? I was under the impression that adding of in front of something turned it to the generic version like "Je dois acheter du pain" for "I must buy bread" not "I must buy THE bread", which Duolingo will certainly count you wrong on if you include "le". Based on what we previously learned I expected this to be "My uncle is an author of books" or "A book author" ...
"un livre" is masculine to mean a book, so you cannot have a feminine article in front of a masculine noun.
"du" is not only a partitive article, it is used in number of cases where the preposition "de" and the definite article "le" are both needed.
"du" is the contraction of "de+le", whether or not this is the translation for "of the" or "some" or "about the".
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I haven't tried:
"My uncle is the book's author"
does DL accept that as a correct answer from French to English?
Jan 29th. 2019.
The correct translation should be:My uncle is the author of book,Without any article before the book. Therefore the translation there before "the book"is totally wrong. I hope they should take a good examination to the sentence Thank you.
"Mon oncle est l'auteur du livre" has "du" as the contraction of "de+le" = "of the". It is a possessive case.
Therefore, the book is specific and you need "the author of the book" or "the book's author".
As far as I can tell, "the author of book" does not make sense.
