"Ces artisans sont chers mais sympas."
Translation:These craftsmen are expensive but nice.
19 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Why in this day and age is "crafts people" rejected? It is shameful enough to make us re-do an entire tree from scratch just because DL added a few hundred words, but to penalize us for using contemporary, politically acceptable English? This is a thoroughly exasperating exercise in futility. The German upgrade was FAR superior. Please revert DL French to alpha or beta status.
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No, it wasn't even particularly common when I was growing up and not everyone would understand it if used.
Everyone understands "expensive". Those who are exposed to a higher register of (Australian) English understand and sometimes use "dear".
716
I wonder why it's not letting me use the word artisans in English. It is an English word as well
I'd say an artisan is someone who is skilful at making beautiful things by hand that can be used e.g. furniture, jewellery etc, whereas an artist is someone who is talented at making beautiful (sometimes) things to look at like paintings. You might even say someone , who is very talented in their work, like a gardener, joiner etc is an artisan.
Can this be translated to a generic word like craftspeople rather than craftsmen. I know in French if you are talking about a mixed group you default to the male but the English translation would use a gender neutral term.
- 1343
As time goes on duo gives more and more sentences that I will never find application for. For instance sentence for this exercise "These craftsmen are expensive but nice" - I don't understand its nature, when would I use it? "Expensive" as in "they ask for a high wage" and "but nice" as in "those who don't ask for a high wage are normally nice but those who do ask for a higher salary are generally rude". See? Often duo suggests gramatically correct sentences but semantically they are weird, or sort of incomplete, or out of context, or both. Would you not try to give sentences that you can actually use in your daily life if you were to teach someone a foreign language?
- 1826
I took this as the goods they're selling are expensive but it's a very pleasant purchasing experience.
Odd sentences are directly useful in terms of learning - you have to extract the meaning via your knowledge of sentence structure and grammar. (Even better would be nonsense; like 'Christmas Day in the Workhouse' or the works of Edward Lear.)
- 2033
Why is thus sentence not accepted? "These artisans are expensive but friendly." The Larousse Français-Anglais Dictionnaire has the following definition:
sympa [sε̃pa] (familier) adjectif [personne, attitude] friendly, nice [lieu] nice, pleasant [idée, mets] nice
- 121
I was brought up not to use "nice" as it was regarded as lazy, too generic, but told always to try to find a more appropriate adjective. Is "sympa", similarly, a lazy, catch-all word that should be replaced by something better where possible?
- 1561
just venting What the heck!?! Cette artisane = this artisan, Ces artisans = these craftsmen? Why?
This sentence doesn't seem correct to me. I think it would be more appropriate to say these crafts are expensive rather than the people being expansive.