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- "Le week-end, les enfants von…
"Le week-end, les enfants vont et viennent."
Translation:On weekends, the children come and go.
18 Comments
Yes - in English we would say "come and go" rather than "go and come" - unless it is important to specify that they go first and then they come, I suppose.
396
Le + [time element] is the French way to generalize to all such times. Just another thing to accept and memorize.
I would say that "on the weekends" and "on the weekend" are identical to me. Even though "weekend" is not pluralized in the second case it carries the meaning of multiple weekends.
In fact I don't think I would say "On the weekends" I would either say "on weekends" or "on the weekend".
Since this is an action that happens habitually, the present simple tense is most appropriate.
Every morning he drinks coffee.
At night she brushes her teeth.
More info here.
- 352
Well, I answered "go [vont] and come [viennent]" because that is the order of the words in the sentence, even though the English expression is 'come and go'. It was considered wrong ... implying that the normal French expression is 'go and come'.
You are correct, the French expression is "vont and viennent" and the English expression "come and go". Funny the similarities and differences?
Ughhghg, my first instinct was to put "come and go" but I figured duolingo would ding me bc the french sentence isn't in that order. So I put "are going and coming" and what do you know, it dinged me bc it was "come and go". God I never know when to be literal on this app! lol
As "le week-ends" has to be translated into English, the phrase "At the weekends, the children come and go" should - must! - be acceptable.
"At weekends" and "at the weekend" are already accepted. At the weekends is commonly said? It wasn't included because it was not listed as correct in Cambridge. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/weekend However, if you can point me to another authoritative source, I'll check it out.
Le week-end? How is that plural at all? Les week-ends I could understand.How is this right? How would you say the week end?
Le week-end can mean either on weekends/on the weekend or "the" weekend, depending upon whether the rest of the sentence means something that happens once or repeatedly.
Je veux partir pour le week-end. → I want to go away for the weekend.
- 899
I agree entirely, but this is a tricky translation. We (in the USA) would most certainly say "the children come and go on the weekend" to convey a repeated event.
- 352
In common US English saying "weekends" or "on weekends" would carry the same meaning. n'est-ce pas?
I too wrote 'weekends' and 'children' not 'on the weekends' and 'the children' - why is it wrong? - (I'm UK English)
