"Les enfants prennent le goûter à seize heures."
Translation:Children have the afternoon snack at four o'clock.
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1349
I have never heard "goûter" used to refer to afternoon snack specifically, in Canada it is used to refer to any snack. Also, nobody in english is going to say "the afternoon snack".
- 1451
I agree, you could say someone is going to have "an afternoon snack," putting "the" in front sounds unnatural.
- 1051
"an" afternoon snack is shown as an alternate correct translation. It also accepted leaving "the" out - "The children have afternoon snack..."
My dictionary (Hachette) defines it as "snack (eaten by children mid-morning or mid-afternoon)".
I have always understood "le goûter" to cover elevenses as well as afternoon tea.
What about second breakfast? Le deuxième petit déjeuner ou le premier goûter ?
Second breakfast? Is that a thing? I get too portly on no more than one breakfast!
- 1809
It's a Tolkein joke. I think it got a passing mention in "The Hobbit", but by the time he was putting the Lord of the Rings into publishable form - during the WW2 rationing period, his nostalgia extended very firmly to memories of good eating. It shows in his writing - in both the sybarism (sybariteism?) of descriptions of the Shire and other hospitality, and in the misery of camping in the rain week upon week. But since Tolkein invented (? possibly) the phrase, it has become a part of the language, if not a common thing in reality. Elevensies, on the other furry foot, were always a thing.
- 1329
The more generic terms for snack are en-cas, casse-croute, or the anglicism le snack. Gouter is specifically an afternoon snack.
- 480
Unless the snack has been previously mentioned. Not sure if that is implied in the French sentence or not.
Are you a native French speaker? If yes, is "prendre le goûter" just how you say "have a snack"?
- 1329
" Le goûter, gouter (orthographe 1990), ou « quatre heures » est un repas léger pris en fin d'après-midi. "
Quotation is from Wikipedia. fr: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goûter
But we do. Your "we" is just a subset, unless you are referring to a language other than English.
- 1058
The English version is clumsy, but le goûter is definitely what French children have after school. They even have a phrase for what in Br English I would call "tea-time": l'heure du goûter.
https://www.linguee.com/french-english/translation/c%27est+l%27heure+du+go%C3%BBter.html
There are certainly several "before noon" references in there, so I still think that it is either elevenses or afternoon tea.
- 1329
Well, it's for small children, so it probably should sound silly. I know some of you want to bend French customs to fit your own cultures. But le goûter is a real French thing. It's a snack served at quatre heures, right after the kids get home from school.
Where i come from, 'tea' (if not a drink) is the substantial meal you have at the end of the working day, at 5 or 6pm.
Maybe at teatime? If you replace afternoon snack with afternoon tea and then the latter with just simply tea, then you end up with "Children have the tea at four o'clock." which is wrong. Afternoon tea, in this case, does not mean tea.
- 1809
About 19:00. Or 22:00 in other parts of the country. It's the name of a meal - at whatever time you want it - which has become appended to a foreign drink for showing off to the neighbours.
- 990
As an English speaker I would not say "I had the afternoon snack." I would say that I had 'an' afternoon snack. Maybe it is a regional difference in some other countries but this made it very confusing for me. I wouldn't mind as much in the past but these small issues can now prevent me from finishing a lesson with the new heart system.
- 2109
Nobody says 'the afternoon snack'. Please Duo, have your English sentences checked by a native English speaker. Further, we do not call it a snack, it is afternoon tea. Snacks are eaten any time, even at 3 in the morning.
- 1329
Nevertheless, if you're trying to speak French, le gouter is an afternoon snack. End of story. Your comments are helpful for those who are using a French course to learn English as spoken in Great Britain.
Afternoon tea is an English tradition of eating, at four o'clock in the afternoon, a small meal consisting of a sandwich, a cake and a pot of tea.
I did "the children have an afternoon snack at four o'clock". It seems more natural to me.
- 653
Is it possible at all to make the difference between "Children" in general and "The children" like in our children in French?
This sentence could mean either. There is no way to tell which without additional or external context.
- 653
I know that. But thanks for your answer. It means the only way to make the difference is the long way. Adding context. It's what I needed to know.
No the translation should be sixteen hundred hours not four o'clock. If you are going to mix 12 hour and 24 hour clock then four pm rather than just four o'clock
"Four o'clock" is not mixing anything. It is pure, unabridged 12 hour clock (as it should be).
- 770
Clearly this is a cultural thing that doesn't translate easily. Do French children that have a snack after school also stay up to have dinner at 8pm, say, with their parents? In the UK, young children would be given their tea after school and then would be put to bed between, say 6pm and 7pm. Perhaps that wouldn't back-translate into French easily either.
« seize » means "sixteen; in France they use the 24hr clock so « à seize heures » means "at 16 o'clock" i.e. 4PM! :)
If translated to English 'afternoon' is not needed. Is not used in Google translate
- 735
Does Duo accept snack? Afternoon snack after school or afternoon snack at 4pm is redundant. No one world ever say that
- 735
Yes. They used the 24 hour clock. Noon is douze, one pm is treize, so 4pm is 12+4 = seize.