"Ils sont épuisés depuis que les jumeaux sont nés."
Translation:They have been exhausted since the twins were born.
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You have to use "depuis que" here because you have a subordinate clause, i.e. you're introducing another verb into the sentence. You would have to get rid of the verb (nominalise the clause) if you wanted to use "depuis" on its own, without "que". So; "ils sont épuisés depuis la naissance des jumeaux". Hope that helps!
951
to me, the voice sounded like it said "il sentait epuise depuis que les jumeaux sont nes", sorry no accents here, but anyone else have problems with this audio?
Listen carefully to the nasal a sound in ans, banque and en. That's the sound in sentait. The nasal o in sont, on and font is different; you have to round your lips more to make the nasal o sound. The difference between these two nasal vowels is clear to French ears but difficult for us Anglophones to hear at first.
The other big difference is that il sentait épuisé has an extra syllable. It's also grammatically wrong. The correct form would be il se sentait épuisé, which has two more syllables than Duo's sentence.
Ils sont épuisés : [ il sɔ̃ te pɥi ze ] - 5 syllabes.
Il sentait épuisé : [ il sã tɛ te pɥi ze ] -- 6 syllables, but note that this is grammatically wrong
Il se sentait épuisé : [ il sə sã tɛ te pɥi ze ] -- 7 syllables
Look, I get that the drop down translations can't always be trusted, but when it gives "ever since" as a viable translation for "depuis," there is no absolutely no reason not to accept it, since "since" and "ever since" are virtually synonymous in this case.
This is action starting in the past and continuing into the present. In English, we use the present perfect for that. The French, though, use the present tense, as in this exercise. (In fact, there is no present perfect tense in French.)
Here's another example. I have studied French with Duo for two years. (English present perfect.) J'étudie le français avec Duo depuis deux ans. (Le présent.)