"Laquelle de ces crêpes voulez-vous ?"
Translation:Which of these crepes do you want?
19 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Perhaps "Laquelle de ces crêpes veux-tu? " if you were addressing a family member or close friend.
That should be an accepted translation, however, that is not to say that it is in the "bank" of acceptable responses.
We are taught from childhood
"I want" never gets!
so when translating from French to English I will always render "voulez-vous" and "je veux" as "would you like" and "I would like", not "do you want" or "I want", to be polite.
That may be, but this sentence is most likely not part of the conditional present skill.
Of course. I am just making an observation about English, rather than French, here.
I am not sure French young children are still taught "on ne dit pas 'je veux', on dit "je voudrais'".
But rules of good manners are the same.
12
It's true that saying "I want" sounds too direct and rude, and it's the same in French: "Je veux" should be replaced by "Je voudrais (bien)" or "J'aimerais (bien)"
But I'd say this only applies to 1st person: I see nothing wrong with saying "Do you want ?" in English or "Voulez-vous ?" in French.
The audio by the woman is fine. But the audio by the man did not seem clear to me. I tried multiple times. Usually his pronunciations are very clear.
In English "do you want" and "would you like" are identical in meaning.
You have not been taught the French conditional mood yet, so you have to translate verbs to the indicative mood.
- in indicative: "voulez-vous ?" = do you want?
- in conditional: would you like? = voudriez-vous ?
The given answer "Which of these crepes" could equally back translate as "Laquelle de ces crepes" or "Lesquelles de ces crepes".