"Voici une grande armoire à linge."
Translation:Here is a big linen closet.
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1360
No, a linen closet is a linen cupboard.
To qualify as an airing cupboard there needs to be a provision for air circulation, usually heated. Une armoire à linge does not have this, it is for storage not airing.
According to my dictionary (OED) the French for airing cupboard is "placard qui contient la chaudière et où l'on range le linge", in other words, there is no French name for it.
I'm harping on this translation of "armoire" again. A linen closet is part of the architecture. A linen cabinet or linen armoire is a piece of furniture. Please clarify which usage of "armoire" is used in French. Thanks.
An armoire à linge is a linen cupboard.
http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais-anglais/armoire/5268
What's a linen cupboard? (please describe without recourse to the terms "cabinet" or "closet" owing to the confusion laid out below ;)
The only modern definition of "cupboard" here is "cabinet or closet or other piece of furniture with shelves..." Meanwhile "cabinet" is defined as "1. storage closet either separate from or built into a wall" or "2. cupboard": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cabinet and "closet" is "a private cabinet" (whatever that means): https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/closet#Noun
Oxford, incidentally, explicitly lists "wardrobe" as a kind of "closet": https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/closet
Out of this morass I feel that my presumptive personal predilection to call anything where you store linens a linen closet (out of lack of personal familiarity with any other term) has at least some justification.
- 1585
A picture is worth 1000 words, and here are 1000 pictures:
This should settle most arguments!
Before this, I had never heard of "armoire". Linen cupboard or wardrobe-yes. I put wardrobe and marked wrong. Grrrr.
Are you sure you have no other errors? My same sentence was accepted..
I agree, except we'd call it a laundry cupboard, and linge means laundry. I'd go with linen cupboard though. Isn't a closet an old name for a toilet? (a water closet)
Yes, I thought closet was placard, so a linen closet should be placard à linge. Is there such a thing? To me, an armoire is more like a dresser, or chest of drawers, A closet is built-in.. Although, I do have drawers also inside my built-in closet. All very confusing.
Looks like there is: http://context.reverso.net/translation/french-english/placard+%C3%A0+linge
But it's a comparatively less common term: https://goo.gl/bkabhA, whether due to reasons only of language or of architecture I don't know.
EDIT: I got industrious and looked into the architectural difference question. This is mostly about Switzerland, but gets at the point that built-in closets are much less common on that side of the Atlantic: https://www.englishforum.ch/housing-general/57844-no-closets-where-do-you-hang-clothes.html
One comment interestingly notes that the non-built-ins commonly found are unusually large by e.g. U.S. standards for non-built-ins.
How interesting, well, for myself, I always go with the most basic simple terms that I can, so I will think of placard à linge, having already learned that as closet. Thanks for your input..Good luck with the Klingon..
- 1360
Bear in mind also that a built-in closet/wardrobe (comparatively rare in France in my experience, apart from in expat homes) can be described as une armoire encastrée.
I don't know what either of those things are, but if the translation info I find for them are anything close to right, I don't know that they're referring to the right sort of item.
I assume a "hot press" is something that heats up? Its translations are quite different: http://context.reverso.net/translation/english-french/hot+press
If Larousse knows what it's talking about, I wouldn't be too sure about "airing cupboard," either: http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/anglais-francais/airing_cupboard/561703
- 2062
My answers are
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"here is a big laundry cabinet"
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"here is a big laundry closet "
Both are rejected buy duo. Is "laundry cabinet" or "laundry closet" wrong?
Must we use "linen"?
---just a bit off the topic, as per my life, I have never seen any closets using the material linen. Have anyone seen that?
I'm unfamiliar with either "laundry cabinet" or "laundry closet." The former sounds like it might be some sort of built-in hamper, sort of the opposite of a linen closet (which is for clean linens).
A linen closet isn't a closet made of linen. It's a closet that holds linens. Consider "soccer field"; it's not a field made of soccer ;)
- 1585
Try googling terms like this to see the images. I find that dictionaries often are confusing or wrong when it comes to concrete terms like this. If you search Google for a French term, you will get only the French sense of the term.
- 1360
I have seen plenty of linen cupboards, cabinets, dressers, ottomans and even the occasional armoire, but none were made of linen.
I have also seen TV cabinets that weren't made of TVs and AV cabinets that weren't made of AVs!
We don't use closet. The only English usage is WC, the antiquated Water Closet or toilet.
Who is “we”? It is a regular, ordinary word for me and, I think, the majority of native speakers.
In American English we have adopted the word armoire from the French. It's a piece of furniture, which I don't think of as ugly as the pictures Google presented, but I digress. It is used as a free-standing closet which you could put a number of different types items. So, I believe that linen armoire should be accepted.
It's simply cultural differences which Duolingo does not understand and will only choose one or two translations to mark as correct. Of course, colloquial expressions abound and we have all been brought up with different ones. I suppose there isn't one correct answer but it's a pity Duolingo does not have a better wa to work this out
Such matters are worked out via sentence reports. Duolingo's contributors can't be expected to come up with every valid translation for every dialect of English on their own.
Those wondering why their translation was not accepted should review the matter and if it indeed proves to be a valid translation of the French sentence, report it as missing, or ask about it if uncertain.
absolutely correct, and actually I have found Duo to be quite responsive to submissions of correct answers, albeit they do tend to do these in batches, I will get a few emails in a matter of a couple of days, then nothing again for a few months..