"Marc is a coffee machine specialist."
Translation:Marc est un spécialiste de la machine à café.
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Why do you have to use 'un' here. If Marc were a doctor it would be 'Marc est médecin', wouldn't it? Is it because of the qualifying phrase after 'spécialiste'?
That's a good question. You're right that any adjective modifying spécialiste would mean you have to use the article un.
However, to me the noun phrase spécialiste de la machine à café is in fact the name of an occupation. There is no separate adjective, so the article un should be omitted.
However, I can see this going either way. I hope someone can give a good explanation!
Can you say des machines? Marc is a specialist on coffee machines? In English, we use the singular to make a noun construct, with "coffee machine" before "specialist", but the plural when using a prepositional phrase to modify "specialist". Since French doesn't have noun constructs, I would have expected the plural.
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In another example "Vikram est specialiste en patisserie". Why do we use "un" in this example?
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Why not "un spécialiste des machines à café"? Does "un spécialiste de la machine à café" mean he is only mastered of using and/or repairing this specific coffee machine? Could anyone explain?
Good question. I suspect - no more than that - the 'la' here is the French use to indicate coffee machines in general and if it was a specific machine something like 'ce' or '-ci' would be used. But it would be good to get a native speaker's view on this.
