"You are a student, you cannot sleep."
Translation:Tu es un élève, tu ne peux pas dormir.
26 Comments
It says that "Vous êtes un élève, tu ne peux pas dormir" is a correct translation, too. This sounds beyond odd and is completely unnatural to me. I mean I am not a native French speaker, but I am a native speaker of a language where formal/polite and familiar "you" are different, and it strikes me as being very, very odd.
Not just odd. In my native language (German) it never would be correct to switch from formal to informal mid-sentence. That just doesn't work.
It is wrong. You can't mix the two forms in the one sentence. I have reported it and hope you did too.
682
You can't switch between you (formal) and you (informal) in the same sentence, but you can switch between you (singular) and you (plural).
That is because they use google translate and don't know the difference!
- 753
In another exercise, the article is excluded, as for professions... Can a native speaker inform us which is preferred here (and why)?
And guess what? If you use "étudiant," leaving out the "un" is marked correct. (Tu es étudiant.)
I need to learn when to put de or a before a verb infinitive. Any ideas which lesson gives that?
- 397
What is the difference between élève and étudiant? While étudiant doesn't need the 'un' when talking about profession, élève does!
I don't get it - in the familiar form, it uses "pas"; I answered this using "vous" and I used "pas" and it was marked incorrect. Can someone explain that - it's way beyond me and I used to be a french major
from the viewpoint of constructing the sentence, nothing changes.
tu ne peux pas dormir
vous ne pouvez pas dormir.
that was a mistake obviously.
- 632
same observation as 'jekesq' - I used the polite vous-vous form and included a 2nd 'pas' but was told it wasn't warranted - why is that? Any thoughts?
What is Duo trying to teach us here with this inconsistency? Either stick with informal or formal or give us an explanation.
You can't change from "vous" to "tu" in the same sentence. You could use vous or tu but not a mixture of both. I have just reported this again and assume someone else has already reported it.
