"Ces trois perroquets, il les a volés au zoo !"
Translation:These three parrots, he stole them at the zoo!
26 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
680
Surely 'stole them from the zoo' would be a better way of saying this in English? Unless he stole them from someone else who happened to be at the zoo?
Quite so. Nobody steals animals "AT" the zoo. They are not stolen 'till they have LEFT the zoo!
- 2794
Yes l agree with the others. If you are learning french to visit or live in the UK this should be 'these tree parrots, he stole them from the zoo'.
No, that would translate as "ces perroquets d'arbres"! Unless that's a typo!
- 737
Again, the construction is weird but understandable to teach us the French formation of this sentence . However one steals ‘from’. This could be at the zoo from a cage but let’s keep it straightforward!
- 910
Why an 's' at the end of voles? Presumably because there are multiple parrots; but this is neither a reflexive verb or a verb that uses 'etre' as the auxiliary, so I wouldn't have thought that matching the gender/number was needed.
- 774
I think this is because of the "left dislocation" in the French statement that tells you there are multiple parrots. the Lawless link provided by neurofire80 says: "3) Avoir verbs The vast majority of French verbs use avoir as their auxiliary and don’t agree with their subjects the way être verbs do. However, they require agreement with any preceding direct object."
In this case I think that the parrots are preceding direct objects. here's a repeat of the link: https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/verb-agreement/
Stole them "at" the zoo is plainly incorrect. You steal "from" someone or someplace, that's different from buying something "at" a store. This needs to be corrected in the lesson.
I got this wrong too, but can see how this would work in English as "At the zoo, he stole these parrots.". Still, I think "from" should be accepted.
- 774
From/at - well, apart from that debate, in English something like this requires a different construction. The two statements don't sit together at all well. It's fair enough to make a literal translation as given, but no English person would say it like that. We'd probably be quite content with: "He stole these three parrots from the zoo." Alternatively, to keep Richard784794 happy: "He stole these three parrots while he was at the zoo."
I'm not sure if I was the only one who had trouble with the verb - direct object agreement here, but here's a link that helped me... https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/verb-agreement/
- 1105
With all the kerfuffle over "steal from" => "voler à" nobody seems to care (or have noticed) that "un perroquet" => "a parrot" and "a parakeet" => "une perruche" (not "une perruque", because that's "a wig").
Of course it doesn't help that our transatlantic cousins insist on calling budgerigars parakeets.
- 774
LOL. But all the commentators here are happy that perroquet = parrot. As far as I can see no one had previously introduced parakeets, let alone budgies! Interestingly, the French translation for "toupee" which is commonly used in English, is not apparently the same word, but "postiche"! If you happen to be wearing either un postiche or un perruque when you have un perroquet on your shoulder then you had better watch out!
- 1105
I was just surprised that nobody expected "perroquet" to mean "parakeet", that was all.
Which then highlighted that Americans don't know what a budgie is.
From would be better, you'sd say you stole something FROM somewhere not AT somewhere. :\
il s'avère que jusqu'ici dans mon entraînement français qu'avoir vu pas mal de phrases comme, par example, " une personne a volé DANS un portefeuille or DANS un sac. " Je me demande donc, en suivant cette logique jusqu'au bout, pourquoi pas " " DANS le zoo." " aux arbres " mais " dans le zoo " ?
It's perfectly acceptable to say he stole the parrots at the zoo. Just as he could steal a wallet at the zoo. The parrots don't have to belong to the zoo. They could be in a van in the zoo's carpark. He could also have stolen them at the bus station, or at the supermarket, for example. Without context an assumption is made that the parrots belonged to the zoo, but that may not be the whole story.