"Les jupes des filles sont grandes."
Translation:The girls' skirts are big.
80 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I'm thinking this is a bug. Same thing as with "the boys' fries". The preferred translation above has it right, but it's telling me that "girls' skirts" is a typo and should be "girls skirts". This is wrong.
1723
Yes, this is frustrating. Its telling me "girls skirts" is correct, but they have forgotten the plural possessive (girls' skirts). More frustrating is the reporting system which only allows certain responses, none of which fit this error—so I made a report that indicated the French was wrong. I am more frustrated with the reporting system than the original error!
Yeah!!! Didn't you notice? LOL Duo must be really tired making all these questions... (JK)
...reply to SkinnyMessican
This is a bug in the system itself. It's been reported and I hope it gets fix.
again and again. if i want emphasis on the owner i would say 'the girls' skirts' if i want to emphasize the object i would say 'the skirts of the girls' english is not limited to expressing ownership by one way and one way only.
As a native English speaker (American) I wouldn't say "the skirts of the girls"
- 1723
As some comments have indicated, using "of the" is not necessarily dated or wrong. E.g.: Person 1: "What is the cat's name?" Person 2: "The cat is Siamese." Person 1: No, no, not the breed—what is the name of the cat?" It's all about emphasis as another person has commented, and also (if written) a bit about style. Written or verbal, no real difference: "The size of the country has been debated, but not its importance. The size of the country's army is also important" (The latter is better than "the country's army's size"! :)
You could, it's just that many modern-day people recognize it as a dated way of saying 'The girls' skirts'.....
Agreed. I know that duolingo normally ignores grammar (missed capitalisation, commas & question marks generally don't register as a typo - all of which is fair enough), but this is worth getting right since possessive apostrophes affect the meaning of an English sentence.
I got a typo warning for putting a possessive apostrophe on the end of girls: "The girls' skirts are large" - Yet on this page the correct translation indicates that there should be a possessive apostrophe. (Mine was definitely girls' NOT girl's)
If your answer is identical to the translation displayed and still graded as incorrect, this is a bug. Any translation you're shown is present in our list of accepted translations. If you want to report it, please do so through the bug form, and remember to add a screenshot. https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204728264-How-do-I-report-a-bug-
- 1968
I wrote The girls' skirts are big, which is correct, and it was marked as having a typo because it should be girls with no apostrophe. I was correct but told I was incorrect. This needs to be fixed.
I assume by "It" you mean "girls'". The DL translation (on my browser version) has had the apostrophe since at least 3/30/2018. Do you still see a different DL translation without the apostrophe?
Again, you need the apostrophe. The girls' skirts...since it is a possessive plural.
Yes. This is a BUG and it has been reported. The correct sentences are in the database, but due to a bug, it doesn't recognize the plural apostrophe s' and counts it as an error. This is very frustrating for everyone involved. I don't know the timeline for staff to fix this.
The same problem as before -- in the exercise, the word "girls" does not have an apostrophe at the end like it should. In the answer above it does, which is correct. But the answer in the exercise is wrong.
I know it is wrong. This is a BUG. Until the developers fix it, it will continue to appear despite the fact that the sentences are correctly written in the incubator. I have hundreds of messages in my inbox about this bug, but there is not a thing I can do about it. :-(
girls' - PLURAL girls - needs the apostrophe to show possession. boys' - PLURAL boys - needs the apostrophe to show possession.
The English word options don't show girls' but rather girls in the presentation mode.
- 1375
The audi and voice of the female speaker is becoming impossible to understand therefore many questions are answered in correctly . The voice of the male speaker is clear. There has been many new improvements in Duolingo such as French stories in the Lab section. I hope to see this problem solved. Thank you.
On a whim, I said "the girls' skirts are long" and it was accepted. Is that actually used in French? Is this a specific case where "long" is an acceptable translation or are there others?
"Big" or "large" are the preferred translations, but long is also acceptable. You can also write: Les jupes des filles sont longues to mean "long."
Perhaps they walked into a plus size store and realized that there were no dresses that fit them. Because les jupes des filles sont grandes
DL it seems is not consistent here. In a previous sentence, it insists The men's ties are red... des hommes. Here, des filles=the girls'. So what is the difference? I hope I am explaining the issue well enough..
The word men in the plural form does not have an s at the end. To show plurality, you add an apostrophe 's. Girls already has an s at the end. To show plurality for words ending in s, the apostrophe should go after the s, girls'.
- 1688
the skirts of the girls.... or the girl's skirts grammatically and in spoken language is the same... please accept
Not if you wrote it like that. "The girl's skirts" means "the skirts of the girl", a single girl. If you want to indicate multiple girls, the apostrophe goes after the s.
If you ever studied phonetics in school, that is, sounding out the letters of the alphabet, de is the d sound, by itself, des is the sound of the word day, to my ear, anyway, so they really are quite different, not subtle...fille and filles are the same sound, so you distinguish singular versus plural from the article attached...
- 1868
To my ear "des" and "day" sound slightly different, the "d" in "des" is shorter in duration and sharper, with the very tip of your tongue touching the roof of your mouth. The "d" in "day" is longer and flatter, with more of your tongue touching the roof of your mouth ever so slightly and lingering slightly longer.
My native tongue (Croatian) has a phonemic ortography, so I do get it. I guess I just haven't heard "de" enough times to remember it's pronounced like "d".
Let me ask another question: Why can't we say "Des Jupes les filles sont grandes"?
the skirts → les jupes (of the) girls → de + les = des filles (the skirts of the girls).
In English we nearly always show possession by changing the word order and adding a possessive apostrophe → the girls' skirts
You have to understand that there are two type of "des."
-
Des can be the plural form of une.
une jupe → a skirt
des jupes → skirts -
Des is also how the French shows possession
de + les = des
the girls' skirts → les jupes des filles
I wrote (the girls' skirts are tall ). But was not accepted..! I would like to know where is my mistake ?? Someone explain to me please.
- 1868
In English we never say that a skirt is tall. As an object of clothing it hangs on another object (a person in this case). It is assumed that a skirt is some material that hangs along the lower half of the object or person it is attached to. In this case it is fabric that hangs on the lower half of a person. We can say long or large or big, but never tall. Free standing objects are tall; a tree, a building, a basketball player and so on.
As objects of clothing go, however, there is at least one that can be tall, the "hat". Abe Lincoln is frequently shown in a tall hat. A stovepipe hat and a top hat are both tall. So is a bishop's mitre. I was going to add a picture of Episcopal Bishop Katherine Schori in her mitre, but realized I don't know how to add a picture to the discussion.
Even if you could say a skirt is tall, the French sentence most likely means wide or just big/large.(or else it would be longue)…But I just saw that "long is also acceptable"
The microphone is not working. As soon as I click on the microphone, before I can speak, it marks me wrong.
- 1684
I see the posts about the possessive error for the English "girls" in the answer choice is still not corrected. For the reporting buttons, why not include all of the possible options instead of a few and never the one that is needed.
I got a "Type what you hear question" is there anything in the pronunciation of this sentence that indicates that filles is plural. Would it sound the same if the sentence were, "Les jupes de fille sont grandes"?
Yes, if it were singular it would be de la fille. This is the possessive. Plural it is (de + les) which of course is des.
This is very different from the des that means more than one or is the plural of une.
I was about to comment but i realized "SkinnyMesaican" already made the complaints. It's actually wrong, and it should be rectified.
If you had read the rest of the thread, you would realize that there indeed should be an apostrophe in girls, but it should follow the s: girls'. Girls' means more than one girl own something. There's a bug that cuts off the apostrophe at the end of words in Duo.
- 1260
The translation to English leaves out the apostrophe for the possessive . Instead it says girls. ls is the plural for girl. The apostrophe shows belonging to :" The girl's skirt".
If it were about one girl, it would be les jupes de la fille sont grandes.
Marked incorrect for using the word 'large' instead of the word 'big'. Does it not mean the same thing?