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- Topic: French >
- "Pour combien de temps ?"
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I have a question. Do you mean there's no 'plural' form for temps since the "de" in "Pour combien de temps" is singular?
Sorry, that was a bit unclear. What I meant was this: The singular is "le temps", the plural form is "les temps". So they look identical.
You can say "How long for" ? or "For how long" ? Both are acceptable English responses.
Ending a sentence with a preposition is considered bad form in English grammar.
Ending a sentence with a proposition is generally considered bad form in English.
...can't edit, can't delete, and this didn't even show up until I refreshed the section. Argh. Corrected version below.
- "Combien de fois?" Combien is a quantity word so the article is omitted (just de instead of de+les).
THat kind of sounds like you're doing a task and asking someone how many times you have to do it before completion compared to "how much time" you have left in completing a task
Why cant i answer "about how long?" Instead of "for how long?" The app gave it as a synonym but then marked me wrong.
How long? means 'what was the period of time?' Adding the word 'time' to 'how long' would be repeating yourself and is definitely incorrect English.
du = de+le, so your question becomes when to use/not to use the article with the word "de". This was first briefly discussed in the tips and notes of the food chapter: https://www.duolingo.com/skill/fr/Food . In this sentence, we have the word "combien", which expresses a quantity. The article is omitted after quantity words (combien de, un peu de, beaucoup de, une centaine de, trop de, etc.). This particular case of quantity words is explained at least in: https://www.duolingo.com/skill/fr/Adverbs-1 .
For how much time is no to very used in English. How much time is the most common expression
Seems like "About how long?" or "About how much time?" should be valid here.
What is wrong with: for what length of time? I agree that not exactly what you would hear from a native speaker, but it seems correct to me.
I wrote "How much time?" and it was marked correct. But the alternate answer discussed here ("For how long?") has quite a different meaning. Are both correct, or was my answer actually incorrectly accepted?
