"The horse drinks water, alone."

Translation: Le cheval boit de l'eau, seul.

[bdsimpson1]

Would it be appropriate to write "d'eau" instead of "l'eau" since there is no "the" in the sentence?

[Sitesurf]

No it would not be appropriate.

• il boit l'eau = he drinks THE water (definite)
• il boit de l'eau = he drinks (some) water (partitive)

[Joel-Iowan]

'THe horse drinks water, alone' got translated to 'Le cheval boit l'eau, seul', I thought that in order for 'the' to be omitted in english, in french you had to have 'du' or 'de la'(partitives). Is water a special case?

[Sitesurf]

there is a mistake in the program: boit de l'eau = drinks water; boit l'eau = drinks the water.

[MmeOh]

pourquoi "tout seul" n'est pas correct aussi?