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- "Your dog is quite fat."
"Your dog is quite fat."
Translation:Ton chien est assez gras.
28 Comments
1320
Larousse defines assez as enough, quite and rather. It shows plutôt as a synonym.
Pretty is about as slippery a word in English as assez is in French.
Both "pretty" and "quite" are slippery
http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/quite
http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/pretty
1320
I quite agree. I was just pointing out that pretty works for assez because pretty works pretty well anywhere that you are pretty sure that it will be understood which is pretty near all the time. Even better if it looks pretty when you do it.
According to Oxford "quite" can mean "to some degree" or "to the greatest degree possible" in British English. http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/quite
234
Two suggested solutions are "Votre chien est plutôt gros" and "Ton chien est assez gras" - why does gros/gras vary?
234
Thanks - that is really helpful. I guess that,in English, if we say that a dog is "big" we probably don't mean to imply that it is fat - merely that we are talking about a great dane not a chihuahua - but the terms seem more interchangeable in French.
Because "quite" means "tout à fait" with an objective or absolute notion (= totally/completely/definitely)
- this tree is quite dead = cet arbre est tout à fait mort
Otherwise, if the notion is relative, it will be translated to "assez" (= relatively/rather).
- this dog is quite fat = ce chien est assez/plutôt gras
97
I mean it has two correct answers: Ton chien est assez/plutôt gras. I prefer plutôt, it's a matter of taste.
422
It has several possible correct answers - votre/ton chien/chienne est assez/plutôt gras/grasse. I think that amounts to eight, and if DL also accepts gros/grosse, which I think it does, that makes sixteen. Welcome to translation - ha!