"An elephant is drinking water."

Translation: Un éléphant boit de l'eau.

[knovs]

What's the difference between "boit d'eau" and "boit de l'eau"?

[Sitesurf]

• il boit DE L'eau = he is drinking (some) water (a certain quantity of water)
• il boit L'eau = he is drinking the water (which is in his glass)
• il ne boit PAS D'eau = he is not drinking (any) water (no article with the negative form)

[joelmarshall]

But the sentence above is not negative... why do they use d'eau instead of de l'eau?

[Sitesurf]

Duolingo's error: you should read "boit DE L'eau"

[Paul.Morris]

Boit d'eau is given as an alternative answer to the (correct) boit de l'eau. I've flagged this as an error.

[jesuisuneananas]

Why "de l'eau" and not "du l'eau"

[11anjie11]

'du' is used with masculine nouns and is a combination of both de and le:
de + le = du,
de + les = des
and if is feminine, la, or l', it is just de - de la and de l'.

For example
You would say 'du lait' because milk is masculine - de le lait/ du le lait is wrong.
to say 'some food' you say 'de la nourriture' because food is feminine
As 'eau' starts with a vowel, you need l' in front of it and de always goes with l' so it is de l'eau.

Hope that makes sense...?

[jesuisuneananas]

That's a very helpful explanation, thanks!

[bluebec]

Why is it d'eau and not l'eau? How would we know that the elephant is drinking general water over specific water?

[BOBAgfull]

You should have read the other posts.

[lidzkidz]

It was a Duolingo error. The only correct answer should be "boit de l'eau."

[kcruz305]

why can't i spell it as bois

[Sitesurf]

conjugation of verb "boire": je bois, tu bois, il/elle/on boit, nous buvons, vous buvez (polite singular and plural), ils/elles boivent.

[SumedhaVerma]

Why can't I say "du eau" ?

[Sitesurf]

2 reasons:

• une eau is feminine, so the partitive in feminine is "de la"
• but "eau" starts with a vowel, so "de la" has to be elided to "de l' "

[SumedhaVerma]

Thank you so much for explaining! :)