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- "Un homme cuisine."
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Why isn't it "A cooking man?" The rollover definition says "cooking". Is this a gerund or a participle or a present verb? And then, the answer says it could also be "A man's cooking." I am confused.
Duo does not much like contractions or abbreviates that are not compulsory, so "a man's cooking" may not be recognized by the checking software.
About the verbal form "is cooking", please re. to the rule below:
In English, to mean that an action is in progress at the time you speak, you use the continuous verbal form, ie verb BE + action verb in the gerund form (-ing).
o he is eating means he currently eats
In French, this verbal form does not exist (directly translated “il est mangeant” or "il est mange" are incorrect).
Therefore, you can translate either “il mange” or “il est en train de manger”, where the construction verb être + en train de + infinitive correctly expresses the English continuous form.
Why couldn't "cuisine" be translated as the adjective participle "cooking"?
As I said above, "cooking" is a gerund form, which generally corresponds to the French "cuisinant" (present participle), but the form "is cooking" does not translate to "est cuisinant".
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It is another good reason not to contract "is" with a noun. Sorry to those who have done this all their lives. When « 's » is used with a noun, it is generally understood as meaning possession. Thus saying, "a man's cooking" could refer to some cooking done by a man. If we contract "is" with the noun, we now have two different forms of contractions with completely different meanings. Add the contraction of "has" and now we have three completely different meanings. The Duolingo computer does not know what you mean; it only knows what you type. Sometimes, contractions are natural and efficient. At other times, they are ambiguous and confusing for everyone who reads them. Contractions which may be well understood are not always effective when programmed into a computer without using stringent qualifiers for when they are acceptable and when they are not. Thus, we have the infamous Duo sentences: "Did you've a dog?", "Have you'd a dog?" and "She's a new car".
In consulting the dictionary the French verb for "to cook" is "cuisiner" which has the present participle "Il/Elle cuisine" meaning "He/She is cooking". It is not clear to a English speaker if the word "cuisine" in "Un Homme cuisine" should be considered as a verb or a noun - hence the confusion I believe. If this were to be translated as "A cooking man" then "cuisine" would be an adjective which it is not in French. Thus the correct translation is as shown .."A man cooks" or "A man is cooking". Am I correct?.
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the present participle of "cuisiner" is "cuisinant". In French the present participle (re. gerund) is not used as it is used in English, and never after verb "être". Ex: "j'écoute la radio en cuisinant" = I listen to the radio while cooking.
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"il/elle/on cuisine" is 3rd person singular, present tense
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"un homme cuisine" cannot be the addition of 2 nouns, notably because "une cuisine" = "kitchen"
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a cook = un chef, un cuisinier, un chef cuisinier
Why does dou change "a" to one when is say "a man cooks" is it grammatically incorrect?
emily- a man- is un homme. You use one when you want to say how many. Who's cooking? A man cooks. How many men are cooking? Only one man.
Mitaine forgot to stress that the word "a" was originally "an", so you don't add an "n" when the next sound is a vowel, rather the "n" was dropped from "an" when preceding a consonant. I won't go into the historical reasons for that in detail, since this is all to say the "an" is etymologically linked to "un", as is "one". So "a" always meant and continues to mean a single unit.
If I may... I think when the rollover definition says "cooking" it means as a noun. i.e. the translation of "cuisine" not as part of the verb "cuisiner", but as in "Paella est typique de la cuisine espagnole".
the word "cuisine" can be 3 different things:
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"une cuisine" = a kitchen
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"il/elle or on cuisine" = he or she is cooking
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"la cuisine espagnole" = Spanish cuisine (gastronomy)
I think that was my problem--I didn't realize "cuisine" was a conjugated verb--the definitions looked like a gerund or a noun.
Continous tenses with BE + Verb-ING do not exist in French.
a man is cooking = un homme cuisine OR un homme est en train de cuisiner.
cuisine can be:
a noun = une cuisine (a kitchen)
a verb : from infinitive "cuisiner", "il/elle/on cuisine" is 3rd person singular in indicative present.
I thought the verb to cook is "cuire", so the answer would be 'Il cuit'? I've never heard of this verb before..
I added a s to cuisine and it said it was wrong but everything else was right
Remember:
- in English, he/she/it prompt the addition of an -s to the verb in present.
- in French, il/elle/on never get an -s but "tu" always gets one (all verbs, all tenses, except imperative for 1st group verbs, like "mange !")
I'm confused by the pronunciations of the conjugated forms. Could someone give me a clear guide to how to pronounce each form of a verb e.g. Manger - do you pronounce the e for the je mange form and the ent for the ils mangent form. Thanks - sorry if I'm not being clear enough.
It is really difficult to explain this in writing. You may get a better grasp of these with forvo.com:
http://fr.forvo.com/word/je_mange/#fr
Note that "mange", "manges" and "mangent" are pronounced the same.
