"Elle aime bien ses demi-frères."
Translation:She likes her stepbrothers.
25 Comments
1242
Since step brothers are people, why does "aime" mean "likes" here and not "loves".
Odd that DL (and other sources) include both 'half brothers' and 'step brothers' as possible translations of demi-frères, when they have two different meanings.
- 1722
It appears that "demi-frère" is used and cited in major dictionaries as both half-brother and stepbrother, even though the English terms actually refer to a different biological relationship as you have accurately described below.
- 32
In French the translation is different. I had this conversation with a Parisian friend the other week and became very confused...
I think that aime before a person means love, so we need to add “bien “ to make it “like.”
- 212
Is there any logic behind the placement of the "s" in petits-fils but none in demi-freres?
It could be (although I am absolutely just guessing here) because "petit(s)" can stand on its own as an independent word, while "demi" is only a morpheme.
I said "she likes his half-brothers " and it was marked wrong, I thought ses could mean either his or her . Am I wrong about this ? help please.
It is always assumed that the Subject, here "She", is referring to "her" stepbrothers. To say "his" you would need to add a disjunctive pronoun.
"Elle aime bien ses demi-frères à lui."
- 565
Something that always messes me up... If we wanted to translate, for example, the sentence "He likes her stepbrothers", would the disjunctive pronoun then change to "à elle"? Or does lui work for both genders?
It would change to à elle. "lui" only applies to both genders when used as an indirect object.
"Elle lui lit un livre." → "She reads him/her a book".
Impossible to choose between like and love for aime, if i choose the first one the latter will be true and vice versa
- 776
If you read the comments here you would notice that it isn't aime in this sentence but aime bien. The effect of the presence of bien is to reduce it from love to like.
Am I the only one that hears 'Beyonce' when Duo says 'bien ses'? I heard Elle aime Beyonce demi-freres.... ;P
- 776
The purpose of elision is not how it looks when two vowels collide but instead it is about how hard it is to pronounce them without elision.
Since the final e in elle is silent there is no concern about the difficulty of e and a close together. The L sound which actually precedes the a in elle aime is easy to pronounce in conjunction with the a.
Great discussion on this point. The translation of 'aime' as either 'like' or 'love' does seem a bit arbitrary, and my choice is marked wrong over half the time. Not yet in sync with French standards of attachment. 'Aime bien' downgrading 'aime' from 'love' to 'like' does clarify it somewhat though. Thanks.
