"Your dog is quite fat."
Translation:Ton chien est assez gras.
28 Comments
Votre chien est assez fat to me means the dog is fat enough, not the same as rather fat!
Surely there is a difference in the sentences:
Ton chien est plutot gras - Your dog is quite fat
And...
Ton chien est assez gras - Which I would have thought meant "your dog is fat enough"
Well, there is in English anyway...
I agree. I think there's a spectrum in English ranging from not fat at all to rather fat (assez gras) to quite fat (plutot gras). Why is "assez gras" then a required translation for "quite fat"?
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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
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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.
I think this is a problem with the strict translation equivalents required through Duolingo. I always learned "assez" as "pretty" ("Your dog is pretty fat") and "plutôt" as "rather" or "quite" to line up with the English spectrum. Duolingo doesn't accept "pretty" for "assez" at all.
In British English "quite" means "somewhat". Except for one or two cases where it is followed by an absolute - "the animal was quite dead". But generally it does not mean "Very". In US English "quite" means "very".
According to Oxford "quite" can mean "to some degree" or "to the greatest degree possible" in British English. http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/quite
Two suggested solutions are "Votre chien est plutôt gros" and "Ton chien est assez gras" - why does gros/gras vary?
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.
Not sure, I would indeed qualify a great dane as "grand", but a Saint-Bernard as "gros" (tall + thick)
I was just reading about the difference between gros and gras for another question, and I thought that gras was more for fat content (le beurre est gras) and gros was fat in size (L'homme est gros). Would someone really call a dog or person "gras"?
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
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Wow, tricky question in the middle of nowhere! Is this a sign for the times to come?
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I mean it has two correct answers: Ton chien est assez/plutôt gras. I prefer plutôt, it's a matter of taste.
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!
