"Les pantalons sont vert pâle."
Translation:The pants are pale green.
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When you use more than one adjective to designate a single color (like "light blue," "dark green," "pale pink" etc.), neither of the adjectives changes according to the noun it modifies. For example:
Il a les yeux bleu clair et les cheveux brun foncé.
"He has light blue eyes and dark brown hair."
Ripcurlgirl, merci, but I thought the Fench word for brown is "Marron" according to DL, so which one is more correct
Does this include changes to account for masculine or feminine nouns? For example la chausette vert pâle, or la chausette verte pâle?
what about 'the trousers are light green'? I'm no fashion expert but light green and pale green are the same for me.
1694
light green and pale green are the same for me too... so don't worry about Duo marking it wrong... I think in France you would understand it just the same
We would have to say that "pale" is the best answer but if someone tells you that "pale" is not the same as "light", most people will say they are just splitting hairs.
I wonder if pale is similar to pastel? I think of pastel green as different to light green, but so much of this is local culture.
- 1730
I agree. More to the point, so does Wordreference.com. http://www.wordreference.com/fren/p%C3%A2le
- 1849
I tried “The pairs of trousers are pale green” because pantalons is given in plural, so I wanted to point out in English, that it's more than one item of garment. However it wasn't accepted. Am I right with my translation?
- 1989
Le pantalon est... Ou, les pantalons sont...
J'avais pensé que c'était le premier. Aidez moi
- 1849
The (pair of) pants/trousers = le pantalon
The (pairs of) pants/trousers = les pantalons
The singularity or plurality of garments is always clear in French, whereas in English, if it's not clear from context, then you may specify this information by adding “pair(s) of“. Just take care when translating, because in French you have to be specific.
I put "pairs of pants" and got it wrong. Shouldn't it be correct since it is "les" pantalon?
In general, "un pantalon" will be either "trousers" or "pants" (US). These are very general terms. "Slacks" is a specific subcategory of the genre "trousers".
There are over 1,000 new sentences and only 4 Moderators. Your report will be read however it may take time for the system (which they have no control over) to update it. Please give this post a read. Merci.
- 1849
British “trousers” = American “pants”
British “pants” = American “underpants”
This course suggests American English, but accepts both.
when they're blue it's pale. but they're green it's light. Do we get a lesson in English?
- 1849
Both blue and green can be light or pale, in English as well as in French. To my understanding, pale means less saturated like tending towards white. Light colours are full saturated, but tend to a neighbouring full colour or away from black (where there are dark colours).
For example take yellow. Pale yellow tends towards white. The paler it is the less distance is there to blank white. Light yellow on the other hand can be used to describe a more distance to orange. To speak in computer terms: take this RGB colour as a reference: ffdd00. It is a very light orange or dark yellow. In comparison, ffff00 can be called light yellow.
Note that the blue channel is completely zeroed. When at least one channel is 0, then the colour is not pale. Now let’s increase the blue in order to move the yellow towards white: ffffaa. This is a pale yellow.
Now for another instance take blue: 0000ff. I we add some green, we get a light blue: 00eeff. The red channel is still 0, so the colour is not pale. Now add 75% red: bfeeff. You see no channel is zero, so it is pale, in this case sky blue.
For green, light can mean farther from black. So taken 00c000 (medium green) as a reference, 00ff00 is farther from black 000000 and can therefore be called light green. Whereas pale greens take all 3 channels (get rid of zeroes): c0ffc0.
For anybody wondering what the hexadecimal numbers mean, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors
Regardless of the excellent explanation by Tilo, the bottom line is that pale is "pale," while light is "clair" (as stated by ripcurlgirl above). In a language exercise, the translation should be the correct word. The exercise is "vert pale," not "vert clair."
In correct English this should read: "The pairs-of-pants are pale green." Duo doesn't like it! Rule for Duo; keep it simple.