"Why did he buy only one apple at the market?"
Translation:Pourquoi il n'a acheté qu'une seule pomme au marché ?
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Indeed, although I personally find that it flows a bit better with it. Definitely not mandatory though.
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Yes. It makes the French closer to the English. As I read the English (others may disagree) the question is about the number of apples he chose to buy. So 'seule' gives the necessary emphasis. Had one apple been the only thing he bought, the English would more naturally have been 'why did he only buy AN apple at the market?' The way it's phrased doesn't rule out the possibility that he bought other things at the market at the same time, it's confined to asking why, when he could gave bought more apples, he only bought one. Without 'seule' and with 'une' translatable as 'one' or 'an', the French would have been wholly ambiguous whereas the English, in my view, is less so.
No, no and NO! It isn't "pourquoi il n'a acheté qu'une pomme" but "Pourquoi n'a t-il acheté qu'une pomme"! Really fed up with this blatant disrespect of the French interrogative mode rules!!! It's just scandalous.
Duo took my inversion. Did you really write "n'a t-il"? I wrote "n'a-t-il" (2 hyphens). Duo can be very picky about hyphens.
Your adverb placement seems very odd at best and probably wrong. But you shouldn't be using an adverb anyway. Une seule pomme might work, though.
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I think the issue is that Duo is trying to teach both casual spoken and formal written French through the medium of... writing. That's difficult.
It is not only difficult, it is impossible. But you're right, that's exactly the issue. And that's what explains most of the gross errors and inconsistencies in the app. On the other hand, that still does not explain its appalling level of responsiveness when it comes to making corrections ....
Exactly! In the other two examples "she made only one cup of coffee" and "you ate only one cookie" there's no "seule." Seems very inconsistent to throw it in.
Does this French sentence mean the only thing he bought was one apple and no other items or is it just saying that the number of apples he bought was one?
The English sentence in context could just be about the number of apples he bought on his shopping trip, while saying nothing about the other items he might have purchased.
For example, this story:
Speaker One: "John went shopping for fruit. He bought three watermelons, a pound of strawberries and an apple"
Speaker Two: "Why did he only buy one apple?"
Speaker One: "The aardvark ate the rest."
Speaker Two: "You're weird."
Speaker One: "No I'm not, I'm Glaswegian."
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I did everything else correctly except for writing "que une" in place of "qu'une".
This is the kind of errors I make quite some times. This post is to remind myself regarding this issue.
Actually, this is debatable: did he buy one apple and nothing else or one apple and not a kilo? The placement of "seulement" in your sentence matches the former, while the placement of "only" in the English sentence matches the latter.
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I seem to be only 1 confused about why il n'a achete, doesn't translate to ....he didn't buy. My question is this
Il n'a pas acheté means "He didn't buy." The construction ne ... que means "only" and isn't negative at all, although its format is similar to ne ... pas, ne ... jamais (never), ne ... plus (no longer), etc.
Pourquoi il n'a acheté qu'1 pomme au marché ? Qu'1 ? Interesting reply to my accidental typo, I wrote qu' instead of qu'une. Let me point out that my answer was accepted.
That's like text messaging lingo: qu' + une = qu + 1. :) There are many similar things. 6né (six né) for ciné which is itself short for cinéma. Or "2 ri 1", deux ri un, meaning de rien. One TV show had a teenager typing Je vé pa for Je [ne] vais pas.
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Why is the que after the past-tense verb? In all the other negatives, it is subject ne helper verb negative past tense verb. Je n'ai pas acheté le bateau. I don't understand.
Que doesn't work like the true negatives ( jamais, rien, plus ), which come after the auxiliary. (example: Je n'ai rien fait. ) The position of que can indicate what is being restricted. https://french.kwiziq.com/revision/grammar/how-to-use-restrictive-ne-que-with-compound-tenses-to-express-only-negative-expression
There's not much to explain, so you have to remember these translations:
Only one [noun] = un seul fruit, une seule pomme
A single [noun] = un seul fruit, une seule pomme