"He has beautiful dogs."

Translation: Il a de beaux chiens.

[Carrie610719]

Why is it "de" and not "des" if dogs is plural?

[letsgocommies]

"Des" becomes "de" if it is immediately followed by an adjective, in this case, "beaux."

[diegovasquess]

Because of the adjective before the noun

[Bencloete]

Why not "Il a de belles chiennes"?

[diegovasquess]

I totally agree. I can’t see the problem.

[JeffreyD.]

Report it, guys! I agree :)

[SeanMeaneyPL]

Why not 8de belles chiennes*? Because French defaults to the masculine if no grammatical gender is specified. English does the same. When we talk about a group of dogs, we mean animals of both sexes. Even if they are all female, we do not say "bitches" unless the sex is important to the discussion - as it might be for vets, for example.

On a wider point, other Indo-European languages do the same, and the origins may well be in the masculine bias we see in language development; but apart from legislation and protracted argument, I don't see how things can change. I would like to get rid of gender-based words where feasible. English does not need terms like comedienne or murderess any more than Irish needs banaltra (specifically female nurse) or Dutch ober (waiter), *serveester (waitress). But I suspect we'll have a long wait.

[hamman]

Having a challenging time between "belle" and "beaux".

[diegovasquess]

What’s the problem with “Il a de belles chiennes” ?

[Alan300016]

Why is the feminine version not allowed?

[letsgocommies]

Not sure if this is an error, but the feminine form for dogs is not being accepted.

[LeslieNorman71]

Not at all confident of this answer that marks belles as wrong.