"Nous aimons tous les chats."
Translation:We like all cats.
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Tous goes with a masculine plural noun and toutes goes with feminine plural. http://www.wordreference.com/fren/tout
"nous" is proper French and "on" is its usual substitute in speech (and increasingly in writing).
The only reason for this is conjugations: 3rd person singular (on) is simpler and quicker than 1st person plural.
However, "on" is defective: it does not exist as an object pronoun, direct or indirect, nor as a stressed pronoun:
There is no "on" form for:
- il nous regarde (direct object = us)
- il nous donne de l'eau (indirect object = to us)
- il est venu avec nous (stressed pronoun = us, after a preposition)
- lui et nous avons un chat (stressed pronoun = we, as multiple subject)
- Q: "qui est là ?" - A: "nous !" (stressed pronoun in short answers)
Yet, "on" has a reflexive pronoun (shared with "il" or "elle") = se
- on se douche à 8 heures
Also note that a mix of "on" and "nous" related pronouns/adjectives is frequent in colloquial speech:
- nous, on est venus en voiture (emphatic
- on a nos sandwiches et nos bouteilles
Sitesurf - could we add a unit to Duo on "on"? This is such a great explanation and could be expanded a little to be the tips and notes for the unit, with a couple of lessons that give us a chance to practice some of these variations that you have noted here. Maybe it could be the third bonus skill?
I wrote "We like every cat", and it did not accept, because, according to DUO 'cat' should be plural. This is not correct, since 'every' refers to 'every single' cat. Therefore 'we like every cat' should be accepted. Especially since DUO itself suggests 'every' as a translation for 'tous'. Please correct.
While true, I've seen native speakers claim that the two are interchangeable, which argues for allowing the translations to also be interchangeable. The only reason I could see for DL being strict about it would be to avoid misleading beginners regarding plurals, but that risks making a distinction without much of a difference that's also misleading in its own way.
There is a distinction in English between all cats and all the cats.
"All cats" means the totality of cats that exist, existed or will exist. "All cats are grey in the dark."
"All the cats" means all of the cats under discussion at the moment. "We are caring for our mother's five cats while she takes a well-earned break. All (of) the cats are well behaved, so looking after them should not be a problem."
However: "All the cats in the world would not make her feel happy. She prefers dogs." If you qualify cats by adding a prepositional phrase (in the world) which here functions as an adjective, you then need to include the in all the cats.
I feel that there is a difference, and it's similar to the difference between "cats" and "the cats": definiteness.
"all cats" means all cats that exist.
"all the cats" implies that there is a certain group of cats that you are talking about (perhaps "the cats that live in my house") and then quantifies over just that group, meaning that "all the cats" would refer to all the cats that are in this implied group, rather than all the cats in the universe.
I'm not certain about the French but I think it can mean either of those.
So how to understand which of the following is the real meaning of the sentence?
"Nous aimons toutes les chattes"
=> We (women) love all (female) cats.
or
=> We (women) all love (female) cats.
Is it the context that reflexes the concept behind that?
And my next question is:
How to say "We all love all cats". I know that's somehow weird since it can have the same meaning as "we love all cats", but I'd like to put some emphasis on it. So, if possible any answers would be appreciated.
Thanks
The pronunciation of tous would be different for those two meanings, but you can't tell the difference in writing.
It could either be nous aimons tous + les chats = we all like + the cats, or nous aimons + tous les chats = we like + all the cats.
In the first case, tous sounds more or less as if spelled "tooce" in English; in the second case, as if spelled "too" in English.