"Ça consiste en quoi ?"
Translation:What does it consist of?
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As a native english speaker the phrase "what does it consist from" sounds in correct to me
As a native English speaker "in correct" sounds incorrect to me. ;)
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You could roughly translate that sentence by "What is it about ?" I think. In French, it would be asked in this situation for instance : - "Wanna play baseball ? - "ça consiste en quoi ?" - "Well a player thows the ball, and the opponent must hit it with a bat..." etc. Hope it can help
In English, things don't "consist from" over things; they "consist of" other things
- 73
shouldn't incorrect be one word? mr native speaker? ;) and yes i agree also "what does it consist in?" should not be allowed
As a native American english speaker, I cannot think of a situation where "consist from" would be used. "Consist of" is much much more common here and I have lived in multiple regions of the USA.
why does it end in a preposition? I put in, "Of what does it consist," and got it wrong :(
Because hardly anybody follows the crazy rule that an English sentence cannot end in a preposition. I'd agree that your answer is correct as well though.
You are wrong, sir. It is absolutely grammatical to end an English sentence with a preposition - "The spurious rule about not ending sentences with prepositions is a remnant of Latin grammar, in which a preposition was the one word that a writer could not end a sentence with."
http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarfaq/f/terminalprepositionmyth.htm
Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put. Churchill: god bless his funny soul
Nevertheless, if you are writing a paper, ending sentences with prepositions is considered poor grammar and is discouraged.
Despite everyone complaining that it sounds "pretentious," I appreciate correct English because it means you know how to communicate more clearly.
When you start reading something complex or technical, ending sentences in prepositions makes the reader assume that there is more to the sentence when there isn't more to it. Everyday conversation is generally simple enough that you can figure out what is being said whether or not the correct grammar is used, but when the concept is important and/or complex (or worse: emotionally-driven), there is nothing like clear, correct, concise and unambiguous grammar. Anyone who doesn't believe me should take a statistics course full of word problems.
Kudos to hrtrahan and all others who tried to be correct!
English contains two types of consisting: in and of. They are similar but not entirely identical; consisting of is usually literal, consisting in often more subjective. E.g., this senstence consists of words but the distinction consists in a strong grasp of English. Does the French consister have the same flexibility?
consist in is consister à, whereas the consister de here can be paraphrased être composé de, i.e. the same as English consist of (see here http://www.wordreference.com/fren/consister).
'Il' has less stress on it, so to speak, and would in that case mean 'it' rather than 'that' or 'this'. 'Cela' for example means the same as 'ça', though!
Could you just say "Ça en quoi?" since "en" means "consists of" or "is made of"?
No. You need a verb in there. En doesn't translate to "consists of" or "made of". Table en bois = table in/of wood = wooden table. Not "table made of wood", even though that is the general meaning.
http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais-anglais/en/28919
Also note that you should really think of "consister en" as the verbe transitif.... I realized it when I was trying to analyze why "consists de quo?" would be wrong (sounded wrong in my head but didn't know why).
basic question - anyway to make clearer if I wanted to say "what does that consist of" rather than "it"? i know "ça" could be used that way too but..
I once learned that cela=that and ceci=this But cela and ça are the same and seems to mean it/this/that...
How do you translate to French the difference between "consist of" and "consist in"? One meaning, "to be made up of", the latter "to be an essential feature of". Consist of is usually the physical make up, consist in is usually less tangible. E.g., I consist of cells, yoga consists in breathing and stretching.
I don't do a lot of yoga.
I think I have seen 3 different arrangements of this sentence. How do we determine word order?
I wrote consist on instead of consist in and got marked wrong, can someone explain why? I'm not a native english speaker
I don't know that there's a particular rule, it's just the case that it can only be either "consist in" or "consist of" for the reasons I give in response to jlrosenb above.
Is this construction more common that the 'qu-est ce........' response??? Thanks in Advance!!