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- "Nous buvons des verres."
42 Comments
Me neither! But it turns out we shouldn't literally translate ""Nous buvons des verres."
From Larousse:
- boire un verre = to have a drink
- je bois OU prends juste un petit verre = I'll just have a quick one
So, "Nous buvons des verres" is "We are having drinks" or "We are drinking drinks" in English.
En français, nous disons : "Nous buvons UN verre ". " Nous buvons des verres", c'est une ellipse pour "Nous buvons des verres De ..."
Is "we drink from the glasses" not acceptable? Thinking about it now, that might be "nous buvons dans les verres."
Yes, and as I seem to recall, that is where drinking takes place when you're talking about it in French. ("In" the glass rather than "from" the glass.)
There's really nothing wrong with saying "We are drinking drinks", though, right? I mean, you probably wouldn't hear it unless it's in a sarcastic context, but nonetheless, someone could say it.
I think one would say, "We are having drinks." Shouldn't that be a more acceptable translation, rather than a literal translation? "We are drinking drinks." sounds peculiar and is not very colloquial.
"We are having drinks" is the best translation for "nous buvons des verres". But "nous avons des verres" would rather mean "we own glasses".
Ok so this was SUPER tough to translate,
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I wasnt sure what the voice was saying very clearly.
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I totally forgot the complete conjugated "nous" form for the verb "boire". All i know, is that it definitely ends in '-ons'.
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And i seriously forgot what "verres" means even though that was one of the few words i did audibly hear.
Amazingly though, i got this correct despite one typo in the verb spelling. But my understanding of the context was so sketchy!'-'
We are drinking from glasses - «nous buvons des verres» and if not that, then what would it be?
983
"We are having drinks" should be acceptable. The literal translation makes no sense in English.
'We are drinking' should be accepted!! As 'we are drinking drinks' is just not how we would say this in England.
8/11/18 this is still not corrected to accept either "We are having a drink." or "We are having drinks." It's frustrating
- 1098
the English translation " we are drinking drinks" is stupid, we are drinking some glasses isn't much better~
- 212
"We are drinking drinks", is silly. Better translation is: we are having (some) drinks.
- 509
"We are having drinks" really ought to be accepted. No English-speaker would ever say "We are drinking drinks."
"We are drinking from glasses" "We are drinking out of glasses"
Why aren't those correct?
Am I the only one who could not discern the singular "de verre" from the plural "des verres"? How can we get the correct answer when the speaker does not speak clearly? MORE FRENCH-BONICS!? :-(
The singular would not be "de verre", it would be "un verre". In cases where there is a legitimate ambiguity between singular and plural, Duo usually accepts both.
Why doesn't it take "We are having drinks." as good? "drinking drinks" doesn't seem much fine english for me....
Would a correct literal but proper English translation be "we drink of glasses"? That makes sense in English but is rather archaic.
- 862
It is impossible in English to say... we are drinking glasses... you would say you drink from glasses. this correction definitely has an error. you would not say: we are drinking drinks either... that also does not make sense.
- 862
It is OK to learn that the French people can drink glasses, or can drink in the glass, but for a correct English translation one just cannot say what Duo suggests here., that you drink glasses or you drink in the glass or you drink a drink.... because in English you would not eat a drink, so to drink a drink des not make sense.
